

Class O Otf 

Book_. A. 4.4 is_ 

I C \ 







JUANA OF CASTILE 



JUANA OF CASTILE 


BY 


MAY EARLE 

» 


> > 

,) > 



NEW YORK 

JOHN LANE COMPANY 

MCMXI 



Printed in England 


Gift 

Publisher 

JUL t 19U 





PROLOGUE 





JUANA OF CASTILE 

Juana of Castile, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella 
of Spain, was born at Toledo in 1480 and married Philippe 
(le Bel) Archduke of Burgundy in 1503. She spent the 
earlier years of her marriage in Ghent, where her son 
(afterwards Charles V. of Austria) was born. Juana loved 
her husband most passionately and lived only to please him. 
She was intellectual, musical, winning, tender, hand- 
some and hazel-eyed, though marred by an excessively 
yellow complexion. Philippe had every beauty of physical 
appearance, and every kingly grace, but was shallow-hearted, 
and an unfaithful husband, yet the more shamefully he 
treated his wife yet the more she loved him, deploring his 
absences and often greeting with open joy his returns, 
notwithstanding that she within herself possessed the pure 
Castilian pride. Her accesses of jealousy (unhappily too 
well founded), mingled with reproach, love, and entreaty, 
at length wearied him. 

Isabella of Castile, her mother, having appointed Philippe 
and Juana heirs presumptive to the throne of Spain, they 
visited that country to receive preliminary honours. The 
agonies of Juana’s jealousy — with regard specially to one lady 
of her own Court — now became so great that they seemed 
almost to unseat her reason ; and when Philippe, despite his 
perfect knowledge of her inability to accompany him (owing 
to her state of health at that time), insisted on leaving Spain 
for Burgundy on some unnecessary pretext of Court affairs, 
a deep melancholy, bordering on madness, ensued. She set 
out alone one winter night in her thin white samite robe, 
after the rest of the household had gone to bed, intent on 
following him and, when she was discovered, she refused to 
re-enter, and remained shivering at the barred gates of the 
gardens the whole night. After the birth of her second son 

3 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

she rejoined Philippe in Flanders, where his affection appear- 
ing less cold she became happier, but a return of lightness and 
neglect on his part brought back the old jealousy and 
anguish, mingled with the mental disturbance which by 
some authorities has been considered insanity. Her mother 
seems to have feared the same thing, for she appointed Ferdi- 
nand Regent, though this may have been solely due to political 
reasons connected with the Church. After Isabella’s death 
Philippe and Juana left Flanders for Spain ; but in the course 
of the voyage were shipwrecked on the British coast, and 
through stress of weather delayed some months ; being royally 
welcomed and entertained by the English Court ; — there 
fresh proofs of Philippe’s infidelity renewed once more the 
agony of Juana. During the few following years he at times 
oretended to reconciliations (for political reasons of his own) 
but at others treated her with neglect and scorn. At last 
in Castile an open and avowed rupture took place between 
them. Philippe shortly afterwards died at Burgos, his illness 
only having lasted a few days, throughout which Juana 
never left his side, and after his death still remained immov- 
able beside the corpse, having to be beguiled away during 
the process of embalming, and on her return refusing to 
leave the body which she persisted in disbelieving dead, 
and treated in all respects as if alive ; nor would she for a 
full year consent to its being buried, even commanding the 
Cortes to do it the customary annual homage as to Philippe 
when living. 

After the expiration of the year she allowed the body to 
be taken to the Cartuja at Miraflores, and subsequently was 
persuaded to permit the funeral cortege to start for Granada 
(where the tomb was being carved) ; but before doing so she 
insisted upon having the coffin opened that she might once 

4 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

more see her husband’s face, and then herself accompanied 
the cortege , stipulating that it should always proceed by 
night, and following close to the bier and remaining with 
it. On one occasion, finding that by mistake the halting- 
place had been fixed in a nunnery instead of a monastery her 
frenzied fear lest any other woman should approach the corpse 
culminated in a wild scene, during which she insisted on 
the immediate removal of the bier into the open waste 
country and in the freezing winter dawn had the coffin 
re-opened (thus to assure herself that the body of Philippe 
had not been removed) ; and a requiem Mass sung by the 
priests accompanying her. At Tordesillas she was met by 
her father (Ferdinand, now Regent), who persuaded her 
to retire into the Castle there, and to allow the catafalque 
to be placed in the convent of Santa Clara opposite her 
windows. 

She remained at Tordesillas twenty-five years, without 
ever going beyond the precincts of the palace, and died 
thanking God that her life was at length over. She was in 
some sense an agnostic (probably owing to the ordeals of 
the Inquisition she had witnessed, which had set her tender 
loving nature against any God whose priests could serve 
Him by such rites, and likewise to the influence of the 
“ Friends of Light,”) but toward the end of her sad life 
her own experience led her to take a different view of 
Christianity, and she evinced signs of embracing it anew. 

Some authorities have supposed that the ambition of 
Philippe and Ferdinand magnified, or even created the 
existence of Juana’s mental alienation, in order to prevent 
her reigning as Queen, and that, after Philippe’s death, 
from the same motive Ferdinand succeeded in arranging 
that she should continue to live at Tordesillas ; but the 

5 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

whole political question is too much involved and too 
unnecessary for the portrayal of Juana’s life in love to call 
for any special discussion here. 

(The early years of the sixteenth century being those of 
the Renaissance in Spain, and of the fall of Granada and 
final conquest of the Moors, the fascination that Arabian 
magic had for Juana, and both her own and Philippe’s use 
of Hellenic similes are sufficiently accounted for.) 


6 


BOOK I 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Juana awakes at Lille, on the morning of her marriage 
with Philippe (le Bel), Archduke of Burgundy ; she spends 
the early hours alone. The wedding ceremony. The first 
happy years of their married life in Belgium. Her agnostic 
views and evident intercourse with the “ Friends of Light ” 
(a body of broad-minded and scholarly men, who arose 
in antagonism to the priesthood during the reign of 
Ferdinand and Isabella, and revived the love of Greek and 
Oriental study in Spain, together with a freer theology). 


8 


JUANA OF CASTILE 


My heart wakes ; I wake to the singing 
Of birds in green pleasance and wold ; 
The song that through Eden was ringing 
When Isha there wakened of old, 

Soft wondering, to life, and uplifted 
Her eyes in the Garden of Love : 

Thus I, with new life newly gifted 
Wake here to the rapture thereof. 

O life that is love ! O sweet madness 
Of love that is life ! on mine eyes 
New regions of beauty and gladness 
Loom fair, and in roseate skies 
The sun, with strange glory of seven, 
Rekindles ; stars hymn the new Earth ; 
Sons of God shout for joy in mid-heaven, 
And Sorrow laughs griefless as Mirth. 


Hush thee, throb not so loudly O heart, 

For my maidens yet sleep ; 

Lest at sound of thy throbbing they start 
From their dreams ; let us keep 
This new world of our love, alone ours 
Thus awhile ; let us wend 

Through the gardens and groves, where strange flowers 
Bud and bloom without end. 

The green plain is one transport of Spring ; 

In the copse coos the dove ; 


9 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Winds, woodlands, meads, rivulets sing, 

And each song is of love ; 

The new Earth thrills from pleasance to pole, 
Laughs from east unto west ; 

With the god who informs my own soul 
In like wise possessed. 

Lord and life of our life, that by thine 
Was quickened to birth ; 

Philippe, Heart of the heart which is mine 
And which throbs through the Earth ; 

Lord of love, and my love’s lord and king, 
Chosen queen by thine own, 

I behold in this rapture of Spring 
Thee, dearest, alone. 


Joy-bells through Burgundy ringing ; 
Ringing throughout the new world ; 

Blare of loud trumpets ; soft singing : 
Blazon of banners unfurled. 

Knights of Bourgogne, Knights Castilian, 
Robed in rare tissues of gold, 

Follow my lord, as at Ilion 
Knights the fair Paris of old. 

Maidens of Burgos flower-laden ; 

Maidens of France : side by side 
Many a lovely Basque maiden 
Strewing a path for the Bride, 
io 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

It is for me ? As one dreaming 
Day-dreams apart I behold 
Rapt in sweet vision, some gleaming 
Pageant of Hymen unfold, 

While the old charm of wrought paces, 
Hands interwaving, doth weave 
O’er me its spell ; ’mid all faces 
One face alone I perceive, 

Hear but one voice ’mid all voices ; 
Blind thus and deaf evermore 
Unto all else, life rejoices 
In me as never before. 

Joy-bells in Flanders ; replying 
Joy-bells from distant Castile ; 

Bells in the new world outvying 
Even their jubilant peal : 

Blest by the Priest’s consecration 
Here in the Temple of Love, 

One through the great affirmation 
Made at the Altar thereof ; 

Song Hymeneal ascending 
Around us to gladden our way, 
Philippe and I pass forth, wending 
Unto new life and new day. 


He wakes not yet ; my life still sleeps with him ; 
While from the oriel on lush pastures, dim 
In the grey dawn and sweet with dews, I gaze ; 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

A myriad drowsy flowers their petals raise 
For joy of the new sun ; mine tarries still, 
Philippe yet sleeps, but Love’s wide heavens thrill 
With prescience of the day enkindling there ; 

How fair he is ! Hyperion-like, his hair 
Rays his head round with lambent flame, his eyes 
Veil their empyreal splendours till he rise, 
Re-issuing as the sun-god from the East ; 

Upon his slumbering face my sight I feast, 

And verily some mortal maiden seem 
By an immortal loved in waking dream. 

Ev’n now he stirs, arousing from his sleep, 

And to myself recalled once more I keep 
Watch o’er the homage of my heart, and play 
Queen to his Subject as is woman’s way. 


Dawn yet again ; each day seems but one hour ; 

The matin-bell from Bavon’s grey old tower 
Rouses the city, calling men to Mass ; 

People and priests in festal raiment pass 

Down the dim streets, where bud and blossom sway ; 

Festooned in dewy fragrance o’er their way. 

Gand offers loyal welcome ; but its bell 
Mocks like fiends’ laughter echoing from hell ; 

For in Castile I oft have heard before 
That sound (a Tyrian drum of Baal-Tsor) 

Summon to death and all dread pangs thereof, 

In the great name of God — the God of Love ! 

Hence as I listen abhorrence fills my heart 
And burning wrath ; nor lot is mine nor part 
12 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

In this false cult ; my mother’s missal lies 
Discarded at my side, tears blind mine eyes, 

The city’s joy wakes sorrow ; did I go 

With Philippe to the Palace Chapel, lo 

The consecrated Feast were unto me 

A table of devils ; — “ God’s ? ” No God can be 

In any wise where love is not ; and there 

Of those Inquisitorial fires aware, 

In the uplifted Host I should but see 
A ruthless Presence of cold cruelty. 

Nay rather like Carillo I will play 
With magic in Alcala ; prostrate pray 
With Moslems in the mosques of Andalus, 

Than join in Roman rite or worship thus. 

But I believe not in the God of priests, 

I scorn their fasts, I shudder at their feasts, 

And, saving Love be Lord, belief have none 
In any God, else were my life undone ; 

Yet if Love be not God, strike then God’s knell, 
There is none other, this I know right well. 


Spring with green buds, and Summer with her flowers, 
Autumn with ripened fruit in orchard bowers, 

Gone from us, Philippe, ere we knew them there, 
Still leaving in its spring this love of ours. 

Dark night descends ; outside the chill winds blow, 
Heavy, half-strangled with impending snow ; 

Their stifled moan appals me, as it were 
The wail of Love, in some dumb passion of woe. 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Let us not listen longer, ofttimes thus 
Strange fancies haunt me, baleful, ominous ; 

And formless ills, at which I shudder blind, 
With darkling pinions overshadow us. 


But here with you all evil things take flight, 

And spread their bat-like wings toward banished night 
What unto us is the wild winter wind 
Here in the ruddy warmth, the soft low light ? 


See how the brazier’s flickering shadows dance 
O’er the dim arras ! damsels of Romance, 
Knights, deities, allured there from the dead, 
Stir in the shifting glamour and advance ; 


Your head lies on my breast, your glittering hair, 
Flung back, outshines the gold brocade I wear ; 

Your arms about me, what have I to dread ? — 
— This love of ours is grown too great to bear ; 


Let us outwit our hearts by fantasy 
And live as lovers from the tapestry ; 

“ Yea so (you say), for here in blissful wise 
As yon Endymion I repose, and see 


“ In you Diana who above me bends, 

With pale immortal face whose light transcends 
All mortal dreams of love ; and deep dark eyes 
Where fleeting fire with fire perpetual blends ; 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

“ And after day’s long weary parching drouth 
My lips — insatiate still — drink from her mouth, 
That like some soft red opening bud doth gleam 
Here in a fragrance of the Carian South : 


“ But your own laughter sweet and tremulous, 
Back to ourselves, my queen, allureth us.” 
Ev’n so, ere long the firelight-spell supreme, 
Enchanted other loves we love through thus. 


In eastern bowers we hear the bulbuls call, 

While on our lips the broken rise and fall 

Of that half wordless speech none understands, 
Save they who kindle it, outpassions all. 

Tristram and Iseult of the tapestry 
Its loving-cup we drink unwittingly ; 

Then sit together, hands in fervent hands, 
Forgetful of Tintagel’s looming sea. 


Medea and Jason, with the golden fleece 
We sail from Colchis — nay, let fancy cease, 
Afar I see Corinthian Creusa’s face 
And from hell-flame my heart finds no release. 


The shadowy spell, Belov’d, is broken so ; 
We waken to the brazier’s dying glow, 

The darkening arras, and in this embrace 
Our own, the sweetest of all loves, we know. 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

It is enough, we can no more than this ; 

All fires of Earth, all fires of Heaven kiss 
At these our lips ; in some empyreal dream 
Beings enkindled of pure flame we seem ; 

Of very Love our lives are pulsing fires ; 

Assuaged our dumb tempestuous desires, 

Our passionate yearnings, our volcanic strain 
Toward some consummation sought in vain ; 

Unrest is o’er ; 

It is enough, Beloved, what can we more ? 

Silence awhile for utter joy we keep ; 

Could we draw tears from Earth’s unfathomed Deep, 
Or spheral laughters lure on lightning wing 
(While scarce our lips cease thus to meet and cling) 
Or find wild words of some divine strange speech, 

Not even these its height and depth might reach ; 
The fire of our own love around, above, 

Beneath us throbs ; yea, we ourselves are love — 

Love ; — even the blind 

And cold philosophies deem matter mind. 

0 crowning ecstasy, supreme and strange, 

As living flames our beings interchange, 

For mine thy pulses throb, and in my breast 
Thy heart beats ; by thy soul mine is possessed ; 

Yea thou art I, and in some wondrous wise, 

1 too am thou ; yet on my hair and eyes 
Thy kisses burn ; one fire we are and twain 
Flames that commingle and dispart again : 

My life, my lord, 

It is enough, could aeons more accord ? 

1 6 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Here in mine oratory, 

Held sacred from far days 
To God’s cold distant glory, 

My heart’s Lord, Love, I praise ; 
And where the Queen, my Mother, 
Would have me meditate 
I muse on themes far other 
Than those deemed consecrate. 

On Philippe’s words I ponder, 
Tones, looks, traits manifest, 

And weigh and dream and wonder 
How I may meet them best ; 

How best forestall the unspoken, 
Unseen ; how with no sign. 

Nor any faintest token 
By love itself divine ; 

Of sorrow and of gladness 
My life knows only his ; 

Joy other, hope, fear, sadness, 
Meseemeth none there is ; 

My life by that proceeding 
From his lips draws its breath, 

Life else in no wise heeding, 

Vain were it, void as death. 


For freedom joy long panted, 
Winged, pent within my breast, 
Song o’er, Te Deum chanted 
Still left it unexprest ; 


»7 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

A bird encaged it fluttered 
Blind pinions at the bars ; 
Maddened because unuttered 
Pining for sun and stars. 

But while my court musicians 
In the rose-garden play, 

Freed as by some magician’s 
Charmed rhythm it soars away ; 


High in Love’s empyrean, 

A lark that finds full voice, 

It carols — a wild paean 

That would the world rejoice — 

Here lost in dream I hearken ; 

Play on, O minstrels play, 

Or Love’s bright heaven will darken 
Around its lapsing lay. 


Now like some Lydian measure 
Of golden Grecian days, 

To rhythmic, raptured pleasure 
The changing cadence sways, 


And as the strain entrances 
Yet more, alone, apart, 

I dance — a child who dances 
For very joy of heart : 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Too soon the allegretto 
By minor chords descends ; 

Strays through a sad larghetto, 
And my glad dancing ends. 

A prophecy of sorrow 
Burdens the melody, 

Dim as a far dread morrow 
Whose dawn may never be. 

Yet tears are mine for laughter, 
And sadness for delight ; 

Cease, minstrels, cease ; — yea after 
The day I know comes night — 


How shall I find a voice to tell 
Him whom I love, my love ? 

Unto myself I speak it well, 

Unto him naught thereof. 

Songs of the flaming planet-fires, 
Paeans of winds and seas, 

Would lend me aid ; but he desires 
A lighter voice than these. 

Hearts so diverse, what god at will 
Fashions them thus, none knows ; 
Mine of the tempest never still, 

His of the calm’s repose. 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

How shall we speak then each with each ? 
How shall we kissing meet ? 

Of all thy voices, Nature, teach 
Me one reposeful, sweet. 

Whisper of zephyrs, south and west ; 
Cooing of mated doves ; 

Murmur of wavelets round a nest 
Of little halcyon loves. 

Lend me a voice like unto these 
Tranquil, alluring, light, 

Tender, a voice of joyous ease, 

That I may speak to-night. 


20 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

All the birds have found a nest 
All their little loves at rest ; 

Through the live-long day they sing , 
Flitting hither , flitting thither , 

Scarce, for rapture , knowing whither ; 
Rosy larches, Mayf s white hedges 
Greenwood alleys, river sedges 
Jocund with their warbling ring : 

Under heaven’s blue expanse 
In the fields the zephyrs dance 
With the sunbeams and the flowers, 

But the song of love surpasses 
All the bird-songs ; and more airy 
T han the dance of flower, or fairy, 

Its glad dance amid the grasses. 


21 



BOOK II 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Court fete in Brussels on the anniversary of their marriage 
when Philippe’s attention to a lady of Juana’s suite first 
troubles her unbroken happiness. She muses on the 
difference between man and woman’s love. Short absence 
of Philippe and vivid awakening of her doubts. Their 
letters. A troubled night. 


H 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

In Brussels at the Court of Flanders 
Behold us now ; the Senne meanders 
Through barren plains low down from sight 
While here, as in a pile enchanted, 
Concealed by orient groves transplanted, 

We dwell in beauty and delight. 


As twilight deepens, all seems holden 
Spell-bound within some charmed golden 
Eve of Haroun Alraschid’s reign, 

For our own Court’s felicitation 
From Bagdad borrows celebration 
Of love’s glad year that knows not wane. 

Festooned, entwined, and trellised, flowers 
Glow here as in their eastern bowers ; 

O’er palms, (a green secluded gloom,) 

O’er purple-budded high bananas, 

Hang roses Damascene Abana’s 
Had envied in their rarest bloom. 


From mimic lakes white lilies glimmer 
Athwart the dusk of halls, where shimmer 
And shine in haloed mystery, 

The magic lamps of nights Arabian 
(Sun, moon, and stars to which the Sabian 
Might bow him down mistakenly). 

Harps, viols, lutes with dulcet measure 
Allure to interchange of pleasure 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

The noblesse of Bourgogne, France, Spain : 
In orient splendour lords and ladies, 

(Who should be praised by song of Saadi’s) 
Wend slowly forward twain and twain ; 

And knightliest of the knights, (low bending 
With courtliest grace,) my lord is lending 
His hand to Marguerite of France : 
Enthralled in eastern dream, I wonder 
What spell holds his and mine asunder, 

While her king leads me to the dance. 

As waves of a Protean ocean 
We ebb and flow in rhythmic motion 
Unto the music’s measured beat, 

(That long with changeful charm entrances ;) 
I tire — so often Philippe dances 
With the same lady of my suite. 

Dawn brings adieux, with lingering laughter 
And sweet-voiced courtesies ; thereafter 
My lord and I once more alone ; 

But o’er my love some change mysterious 
Has past, and left me cold, imperious, 

And my heart’s deep is frozen as stone. 


26 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

In the world whereof Love is the Lord 
Neither great is nor small ; 

Both as one in the heart we record 
There the wine and the gall 
Intermingle ; the night and the da y ; 
Lightest gloom unto hell, 

Dimmest gleam unto heav’n, lead the way 

Faintest tokens foretell 

Vastest issues ; least griefs greatest woes ; 

Wellnigh viewless as air 

The most trivial beginning foreshows 

The full end unaware. 


The slight grief — a mere spark in the eye, 
Blown from fugitive wind ! — 

But to beauty afar and anigh 
Its pang renders blind, 

True an infinitesimal pain 
Yet henceforward floats o’er 
All we see a dark fleck, ne’er again 
Are things fair as before. 

The slight joy — a lark’s paean that thrills 
The wide air with delight — 

Let it lapse, ev’n the sun then half chills, 
Waxes dim to our sight. 


Men reply, “ In the planet of love 
Framed by woman ’tis so, 

But the planet we fashion thereof, 
(The while theirs far below 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Straightly circles sore-fretted,) behold 
In wide cycle sweeps free ; 

There small joys and small griefs, manifold, 
Fused in great cease to be. 

“ There the woman’s close vision is lost 
In the man’s larger sight ; 

There the sun by the shade is uncrossed ; 
Separate rays give no light : 

Subtile dusks never deepen the dark, 
Supplementary stars in the height 
Never shine with their faint further spark, 
Day is day — night is night.” 


Is the true world of love this of men 

Where the part in the whole 

Lapses lost ? by their far-reaching ken 

From pole unto pole 

All is seen, all is merged as in one ; 

Sky, land, oceans, vales, streams, 
Mountains, flowers, stars, and sun, 
None failing it seems. 

Is the woman’s the true world of love, 
Where all parts in the whole 
Are singly embraced, or above, 

Or around, to each pole ? 

Every change in the broad vault of sky, 
Or of dark or of day ; 

Every bird and its song, far and nigh ; 
Every zephyr astray ; 


28 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Every cadence of winds, rivers, seas, 

Every flower ’neath the sun ; 

Every wasp, weed, thorn, canker ; all these 
Singly, each in the one. 

In the man’s world his heart beats alone 
With the heart of the whole ; 

The full day the full night only known, 
Entire bliss, entire dole. 

In the woman’s hers beats with the whole 
Pulse and pulse through each part, 

There daedal day night joy and dole, 

Yet entire in her heart. 


Ducal affairs of urgency 

Have called my lord away from me ; 

In the state bedchamber alone 
I lie, my maidens all withdrawn ; 

Long hours are yet before the dawn 
Wherein my heart and I made known 
Each to the other, may at last 
Find bitter rest from silence past 
In holding converse of our own. 

How tired we are ! tired, wearied out 
With love, love’s jealousy of doubt, 
And love’s wild yearning soon and late. 
This semblance of a woman, fair 
As in old time those Lamiae were 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Who lured the Greeks to evil fate ; 

Her gold hair clustering round her head 
And trailing where her small feet tread, 
What doth she here at Slumber’s gate ? 


Why looked on her so oft my lord ? 

What strange pain, like a flaming sword 
Smote thee, my heart, then ? let us keep 
Our lonely vigil, ponder, fear, 

Hope, love, hate, scorn together here : 
Nay thus we wrong our king and weep 
Through our own faithless vague surmise ; 
A baleful fire blinded my eyes, 

Let us forget and sleep — Heart — sleep. 


Slumber no longer sought in vain 

I enter by its gates again 

The charmed dominions of love, 

That were mine own, and are mine still 
Saving when evil doubt works ill ; 

How dark it is ! Scarce risen above 
The white wet mist, yon pallid moon 
(Like a wan flower in bloom too soon) 
Gleams o’er the vacant courts thereof ; 


Through the dim silence to my throne 
I wend, and there sit long alone ; 

Hell-born misdoubt possesses me, 

Where is the king ? His heart’s new queen 
He reigns with in some realm unseen ; 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

’Tis false ! the coronal, that he 
Himself on my hair set, lies here ; 

Anew I crown me with no fear, 

He doth but sleep, let ill dreams be. 

Enthroned and crowned thus with my crown 
What echoed laughter laughs me down ? 
Glad laughter as of love in Spring ? 

Misdoubt requickens, sears like fire, 

Yea my lord’s heart hath its desire 
With Her ; list ! their soft whispering, 

Low murmurous, as southern winds 
Whispers my kingdom from me, binds 
My heart in steel against its king. 

These lips are warm still with his kiss, 

High heaven is fouled in hell’s abyss ; 

Nay, ’tis some subtle evil snare ; 

Shame on thee, heart ! thy lord but sleeps, 
What faithless woman in me weeps ? 

In the red poppy fields, aware 
Of none, he lies ; crowned with my crown 
From this drear throne I wend me down, 
’Neath the pale moon, to find him there. 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Unto myself to ease my heart of sorrow 
An Eastern spell I sing , , 

And from Granada's buried treasure borrow 
The Genii's lamp and ring . 

O Love , Arabian Jinn , who art or formless 
Or takest form at will ; 

Resolve thyself for me into some stormless 
Delight , all things fill. 

As from the vase that long close-sealed , ZW drifted 
On Syrian waves to land , 

TZ^ Genie rose (its magic lid uplifted) 

In smoke o'er sea and strand ; 

Thus king of Genii , god of powers Protean 
From my heart issue free , 

^jfZ^r of some blissful empyrean , 

And spread o'er land and sea ; 

Phen bring unto the Paradisal pleasance 
Its lord , my heart's desire ; 

And thrill us through with thine aerial presence , 

A rapture of joy and fire — 


32 


JUANA OF CASTILE 
“ To the lord of my love ; 

Thus in greeting 
My heart, a wide desolate sea 
Into haven tumultuously beating 
By this scroll in thine absence from me. 

Can the harbour receive the full ocean ? 
Upheaved on itself though it strain 
At the bar in a billowy commotion, 

Its influx seems yet the more vain. 

Can the heart in a roll of papyrus 
More simply find scope ? at full flow 
Though it strain as the ocean desirous 
For ingress, ’tis foiled even so. 

Myriad thoughts, like white sea-birds that flutter 
And cry o’er the turbulent main, 

O’er the deep of my heart hovering, utter 
Vague cries, and for thee seek in vain : 

Look forth then, Belov’d, where (scarce broken 
One billow, anear or afar) 

Gathered in on itself and unspoken, 

Love, ocean-like, seethes at the bar : 

Juana.” 


A courier from my lord doth cross my own ; 
See, Heart, we are not now so quite alone. 


“ From thy presence I write to thy presence, 
For still thou art ever with me ; 

In city, or forest, or pleasance 
I live in a vision of thee ; 


c 


33 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Thine the day, whose fair glories seem after 
Some fashion thine own to beguile ; 

The zephyrs have stolen thy laughter 
The sunbeams have borrowed thy smile : 

If a dove on my balcony perches 
It coos with thy voice ; lissome grace 
Thou hast lent the young willows and birches, 
Spring herself in the vales hath thy face. 

Thine the night, where thy witchery still holds me 
Sleeping, waking, moon-goddess supreme ; 

In the dusk of thy hair darkness folds me 
Thou leanest to kiss me through dream : 

By thee all rejoices around me, 

Not theirs the strange splendour of flower 
Or of sun, thy dear presence hath found me 
Though lost in blind paths from thy bower : 

Philippe.” 


Silence, I pray for silence ; if I sleep 

And do but dream in slumber, strange and deep 

As that which lulls in lotus-blossomed lands, 

Still rouse me not ; O whispering voices keep 
Silence profound as on Lethean strands, 

Nor wake me to the life of those who weep, 

Let me thus ever sleep. 

Though I but dream, (the dupe of false delight,) 
Make drunken with nepenthe at some rite 
Of gods grown pitiful of human woe, 

34 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Still let me dream, such dreams for pain requite ; 
Though all be thus delusion, even so 
I would dream on, as dreams of noon the night, 

As blind men dream of sight. 

Like one, half roused from sleep by dawn’s pale gleam, 
Who wits not what is real and what doth seem, 

I (haply still in thrall of slumber bound) 

For voices of the living world misdeem 
The haunting voices heard in Sleep’s Profound, 

(O’er whose dim realm Illusion reigns supreme ;) 

And waking still I dream. 

’Twixt dawn and dark, ’twixt dream and doubt astray, 

Scarce conscious in an agony I pray 

For silence ; pitying gods I dare not wake 

I dare not know if in the night or day 

These voices speak ; ere my young heart they break 

Ere faith, hope, joy, ere life itself they slay, 

Disprove the thing they say. 


35 



BOOK III 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Philippe and Juana again in Flanders. Renewed trouble. 
Her Castilian jealousy more fully aroused, together with 
instinctive revenge. The birth of her son (afterwards 
Charles V. of Austria). Agonised struggle to retain her 
faith in Philippe. Subsequent proof of his disloyalty. He 
seeks a reconciliation. 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Again beneath the same blue skies 
In Gand the home of my desire 
We dwell, but o’er its Paradise 
The Cherubim with sword of fire 
Keep watch and force me to retire. 

Here by the rivers that still flow 
From the lost Eden as at first 
(Their waters pure and cold as snow) 
I wander, seeking now accurst 
In vain to quench my burning thirst. 


’Tis chill, the plain is blanched with snow ; 
My maidens leave the tapestry 
They broider from that weft I know 
So well ; the weft that lived for me 
One firelight eve of fantasy. 

In merry groups they gather round 
The brazier-fires in court and hall ; 

Their hearts no straitening frost hath bound, 
Hate holds no soul of theirs in thrall, 

The sun of love illumes them all. 

But I stay with my broidery still, 

And than the snow yet colder feels 
My heart ; and blind black doubt (more chill 
Than the keen wintry frost that seals 
The springs of Earth) my life congeals. 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

At length I leave the glimmering woof, 
And down the long bright hall I go, 

Nor from my ladies’ glee aloof 
Thus hold me, for full oft I know 
A woman’s heart creates its woe. 

Espana’s maidens, my most dear, 

Hush their soft laughter silently 
As unto them I draw anear ; 

They fall back with sweet courtesy 
And their eyes seem to pity me ; 

“ Pity ? ” — I am not well they see — 
Their hearts are tender overmuch — 

No pity else indeed could be ; 

Castile endures not any such 
Ev’n her apparel’s hem to touch. 

So now I stand, with smile and song, 
Merry as they, until (most fair 
Amidst my fair Basque ladies’ throng) 

I see the sorceress, whose gold hair 
Has woven for my lord a snare. 

Then life in me runs fire through night ; 
For the gemmed bodkin that I wear 
I feel to smite her from my sight, 

But suddenly wax faint, and ere 
’Tis found, swoon backward unaware. 


40 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

One kiss and yet another, 

What baby- joy is this ? 

The one sole bud remaining 
Of love’s sweet spring-time, waning ; 
In all green fields to Mother 
None were so fair I wis ; 

One kiss and yet another, 

From that allured to this. 

Who to thy birth were bidden ? 
What fairy gave to thee 
The whole white world (a glistening 
Iced cake, pet, for thy christening) ? 
What marvels there are hidden ! 
What magic plums must be ! 

Who to thy birth were bidden ? 

Who brought the cake for thee ? 

But Baby is not heeding, 

For no such gift he cares ; 

He hears young cherubs’ voices 
And in a realm rejoices 
Through which their song is leading, 
A realm both his and theirs ; 

No lower kingdom heeding, 

For no less glory cares. 

So be it with thee ever 
Regard no transient throne ; 

Thus thou wilt purge more purely 
World-evil, soothe more surely 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

World-sorrow, in that never 
These unto thee are known ; 

So be it with thee ever 
Heed no terrestrial throne. 

Ev’n now thy lips are drawing 
The poison from my heart ; 

Cool, soft small white dove nestling 
There where ill passions wrestling 
As at the overawing 
Of Love, desist, depart ; 

Ev’n now thy kiss is drawing 
The poison from my heart. 


Through the long lonely nights within my mind 
Doubt, waking, mocks me : “ Why dost thou thus bind 
Thine eyes from sight, believe but as they find.” 

Nay I will not believe, I will not see, 

Free-will is ours, I will then to be blind, 

And yet to me a god my lord shall be 
Unfallen from inviolate deity. 


42 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Ah ! Love , 5 neath thy 'pomegranate groves His well , 
Life joys in us, ere , all too soon , / 

they who taste the fruit must pass, 
Like Proserpine, one half their years in hell . 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

O’er golden palm-girt strands I strayed, 
My heart was glad in me ; 

Around the nested halcyons played 
The sunlit summer sea ; 

No voice of baleful prophecy 
To ban my joy was heard ; 

No wing of evil augury 
Amid the halcyons stirred ; 


Soft hushed the whilom tempest’s roar, 
The wavelets laughed for glee ; 

When swiftly o’er the glittering shore 
A snake slid suddenly : 


Hugged close within its wreathen death 
I strained in desperate strife, 

With bursting heart and sobbing breath, 
Tense every power of life. 


How long I strove I know not, time 
Was as eternity ; 

It hissed within my ears, its slime 
Dripped venomed, blinding me. 


On its fell throat my hands I clenched, 

And strove at mortal strain, 

With wildered arms that would have wrenched 
Its coils apart — in vain — 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

The powers of life, o’erborne at last 
Strangling relaxed in me ; 

And then I laughed ; all effort past, 
In the death-agony. 


“ Let us be glad together 
(You say), make merry at whiles, 
Grown tired of stormy weather 
Through tears, see, April smiles ; 
Listen, ’mid song and laughter, 
She frolics with the wind, 

For joy that May comes after 
And March remains behind. 

Let us be glad together 
The rains and storms forget, 
Replume the drooping feather, — 
With us ’tis April yet.” 

Yes, thus again together 
Let us be glad awhile ; 
Forgetting stormy weather 
On Love’s Pelorian isle ; 

No hazard of his treason, 

No bonds of woman’s pride, 

No “ moly ” of wrath or reason 
Can stay her from his side : 
Steeled vainly ’gainst his singing, 
Lashed idly to the mast, 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

The while his song is ringing 
She yields ere she sail past. 


My lord, the time is dead, when as a child, 

By specious word and soft caress beguiled, 

I laughed at doubt ; deluded easily 

Was happy again ; for love was then in me 

So young it knew not what full life would be. 

But now, behold, it is to stature grown, 

The depths and heights of its own being known ; 
See, with the tiger-whelp a man may play, 

Toy, trifle at his will, but on that day 
When it is nurtured to the tigress, when 
Of its full powers possessed, there can be then 
No further trifling ; toy with it, or chafe, 

The desert passions wake — it is not safe — 

Quick tears and strange, unbidden, blind my eyes 
Dearest, I know that ofttimes in the guise 
Of a white angel winged with Heaven’s own light 
Misdoubt is found a devil of the night ; 

See, I esteem it such and scorn it thus, 

Let us forget — let love be new to us. 


46 


Unseen I saw ; the sun was low, 
Down the dim paths they strayed 
The Mary-lilies there arow 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Trembled as if afraid. 

So close they walked, so low he bent 

O’er her his kingly head 

Their golden locks together blent ; 

At some soft word she said 

The deepened dark of his blue eyes 

Flashed lightnings into hers, 

Uplifted in alluring wise ; 

Some strange sweet love was theirs. 


The tender curve his lips took, well — 

Too well I knew — (curved lips 
Like those of some enchanted shell 
Wherefrom a siren sips :) 

As through the fields they sauntered down 
The violets sought to hide ; 

Touched by her trailing saffron gown 
The kingcups shrank aside, 

Beneath the heavens’ lurid glow 
The birds their carols hushed, 

A butterfly, alighting low, 

By her small foot was crushed. 

As toward her bower they went, o’erhead 
The sky grew crimson flame ; 

The white brier-roses all blushed red 
And shut their leaves for shame. 

The day sank dark below the west, 

She poured her sorcerous wine ; 

His golden head lay on her breast, 

Mine eyes beheld it — mine — 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

And as I looked the love that rose 
A lava-flood in me, 

Through all its fiery surges froze 
Into a glacial sea. 


“ With lightsome jest, my lord, you ask 
What is it aileth me 
That thus I wear the tragic mask 
Of Muse Melpomene ? 

“ Or am I petrified in dream 
That here with you alone 
Still unapproachable I seem 
As Niobe in stone ? ” 

Nay, touch me not ; unloose thy hands from mine, 
Love hath gone forth from my soul and from thine 
North and south poles are not so far apart 
As we are, heart from heart. 

Let us not desecrate that dead to us 
With a false semblance of its passion thus ; 

Mock suns, auroral lights ne’er thrilled the cold 
Of polar snows ; behold 

I shudder in thy embrace as in th’ embrace 
Of Love’s dead body in a soulless place ; 

Back to the past there is no way, desist ! 

Our kisses are all kissed ! 

*8 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

When the heart's heaven is rolled away , 

Its god no god , its idol clay ; 

When all ideal dreams are o’er 
There yet remaineth us one way : 

Forget that Heaven was , that e’er 

Love , Beauty , Truth , white-pinioned were ; 

That man was ever as God forget , 

Or Earth as Eden , or light seen there 
As seven suns that never set . 


S**, thus the past is past away , 

27^ J<zr& 0 dfoow of day , 

Heavens are lapsed , lo ! the new Earth , 
Where love is wingless , gods #r^ 

Arise, enter its House of Mirth ! 


D 


49 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

With breaking heart I come to thee, 

Lord God of Love, have pity on me ; 

At other shrines I bowed the knee 

And unto gods of darkness sought, 

For stronger these than thou, methought, 
Who in my aid hadst nothing wrought ; 

They held my soul for long in thrall 
Of night and hell, but now I fall 
At thy feet, know thee Lord of all ; 

Could my heart’s anguish outward sweep 
In molten flood as some pent Deep 
Of lava, could it speak or weep, 

Some ease might be ; in silence bound 
No way of issue ever found 
It seethes like fire underground. 

With shuddering shock my pulses beat, 
Hell in my soul and Heaven meet 
In mortal conflict, and thy feet 

(The deadly struggle direr yet) 

As with great tears of blood are wet ; 

The passion of love’s anguished sweat ; 



O turn my lord’s heart unto me, 

Or do thou take my life to thee ; 
Unbind his bond and set him free : 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

With me he hath no happiness, 

My love contents him less and less 
And sees no way whereby to bless ; 

Give joy but unto his heart, mine 
For this full willingly to Thine 
Through shame and anguish I consign. 


“ Take up for thy lament the lyre,” 

Word came unto the seer of old, 

“ Bewail the fallen king of Tyre, 

The covering cherub he, behold, 

Glorious with precious stones and gold.” 

As in the vision the Tyrian king 
In love’s young dream my lord to me, 

Who have no lyre his dirge to sing ; 

Perfect in all his ways as he 
Glorious in beauty, verily. 

How is he fall’n ! the fall is his 
Down in the darkness come to dwell ; 

What matter that mine the anguish is ? 
What matter that for me there fell 
Love, Truth, and Heav’n, with him to hell ? 

If he could but arise once more, 

If these dim, yearning eyes could see 
His brightness perfect as before, 

Joy yet were mine, even should I be 
Left desolate eternally. 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

I sit on the ground with mine idol, nor seek to arise, 

For all deities else, and their glories, are naught in mine eyes 
With its desecrate beauty compared, yea debased though 
it be. 

And, no longer a god, it is all things for ever to me. 


Wilt thou reject, Heart, or rejoice ? 

Philippe our presence seeks ; 

Listen, the same alluring voice 
With the same passion speaks ; 

“ A fool who in the Paphian wine of pleasure 
Dissolved his pearl of love 

Unkinged and dispossessed of life’s whole treasure 
He pleads with thee thereof. 

“ O lips, that kissed, still lure to kiss for ever ; 

Sweet eyes, the light and fire 

Of empyreal heaven ; so gained man never, 

So lost his heart’s desire. 

“ White clinging arms, whose forfeited embraces 
Through every vein I crave ; 

Meridian June’s, withdrawn from me, thy face is, 
And midnight tempests rave. 

“ From thy dear pity’s door none e’er departed 
Unsuccoured, comfortless ; 

To me alone wilt thou prove stony-hearted 
And deaf to my distress ? 


52 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

“ O bounteous one, in all thy wide almsgiving 
Hast thou for love no dole ? 

No apple of life, no drop from all the living 
Sweet waters of thy soul ? 

“ Blind, famished, mad with thirst, see it abases 
Itself before thy feet. 

O lift it to the light wherein thy face is, 

Give it to drink and eat.” 


Because these lips of mine no word can frame 
Of that which parted us ere thus you came ; 

Is it so hard, Philippe, to understand 
No shadowy hand now slips between thy hand 
And mine, to sunder them ? no shadowy kiss, 
Between our cleaving lips, makes hell of this ? 
What should be said ? 

Can words mere nothingness define, or name the 
dead ? 


53 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Although the Sun , from her awhile withdrawn 
Hath left the Earth alone in night , 

When his returning splendour fires the dawn 
Doth she , contemptuous , his light ? 

Nay , one embodied joy she then appears , 

raptured smile irradiate through her tears . 


54 


BOOK IV 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Envoys arrive from Isabella of Spain, declaring Juana and 
Philippe heirs apparent to the throne, and requesting their 
presence in the country. Their welcome at Toledo. Ensuing 
happiness, and festivities in public acknowledgment of them. 
Juana’s renewed agony occasioned by Philippe’s continued 
attention to the same lady of her suite, although at times 
he still shows a semblance of the old devotion to herself. 
His unfeeling departure for Burgundy, shortly before 
the birth of her second son. Her consequent misery, 
culminating in a wild attempt to follow him alone one 
winter night. Birth of her child. She afterwards rejoins 
Philippe in Burgundy, where once more for a few months 
there is renewal of happiness. The death of her mother 
(Isabella of Spain) and their succession to its throne. 


56 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Espana’s envoys in my Mother’s name 
Our audience seek, and loyally proclaim 
The hest that heirs apparent of the Crown 
— Its wide new conquests and its old renown — 
Appoints us, and our presence thus requires 
For the prospective honours she desires : 
Phantasmal unto me, crowns, kingdoms, thrones 
Love is my all, and all things else disowns ; 

But joy is mine in that my lord is fain 
Of our Castile, and its broad realms of Spain. 


In dark Toledo’s towers 
Amidst the snow and wind, 
Our love hath made us bowers 
Of amaranth entwined. 

The turbid Tagus, flowing 
O’er tawny rock-bound sands, 
To us is Pison glowing 
On Havilah’s gold strands. 


As here awhile we tarry, 
Together we look down 
On plains that blizzards harry, 
Or searing suns burn brown ; 
But groves (or white or golden) 
In the grey wintry gloom 
(By all else unbeholden) 

For us bear fruit, and bloom. 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Fanfare of trumpets, breaking, 
Through love’s new dream ; as king 
And queen apparent, waking, 

We hear the joy-bells ring, 

And watch our knights assemble 
In courts where cushats coo, 

And roses glow and tremble 
While southern zephyrs woo. 

Mid shouts the glad air rending, 

As in some festal play 
Down purple stairs descending 
We take our royal way. 

The pageant now advances ; 

With it we pass between 
Hedges of glittering lances 
And bucklers ; King and Queen 
In merry mummer-drama 
At carnival we seem, 

Saving that “ Woe Alhama ” 

Wails through the glint and gleam, 
As down gay streets and under 
Rare Moorish spoils aglow, 

’Mid martial strains and thunder 
Of glad acclaim we go ; 

Through coral alcoves, bowers 
Of palm (where twined we see 
Strange Hispaniolan flowers 
From seeds of faerie). 

Still onward, while before us 
Santiago’s towers loom ; 

Espana’s flag waves o’er us ; 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Her royal cannon boom ; 

By papal pomp preceded 
We enter, yet all seems 
A pageant scarcely heeded 
A carnival in dreams, 

Until athwart the dreaming 
Castile’s own voices break ; 

Then king and queen of seeming 
True king and queen awake. 


Unto Granada we repair ; 

Beneath the Archway of the Sun, 
(Resplendent in the radiant air,) 

Down the low gorges, bare and dun 
The brilliant cavalcade moves on ; 

In gleaming file and festal train 
Grandees, Dukes, Caballeros ride ; 

A King to grace the kingdom’s pride 
, (Paris, in golden mail and casque) ; 
Philippe restrains his restive steed : 

Once more all seems a dreamer’s masque 
As with my Mother I precede 
Our retinues, and nothing heed ; 

Yet all too well at heart I know, 

In passing through the dreary plain, 
Who lures my lord to ride apart 
Among the ladies of my train, 

And night and madness fill my brain. 


59 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

I wait, he comes not, lured from me ; 
Through the long hours I lie alone ; 

I, O Corinthian wives, as ye, 

And curse with passion like your own 
The Libyan Lamia’s sorcery. 


At nightfall in the pleasant ways 
She sets her beauty for a snare, 

A glint and gleam more fine than day’s 
Chequers the toils of her gold hair, 
And men are taken unaware. 


With charmed voice she cries “ O list ! ” 
Witching their heart with serpent wiles ; 
By her sweet sorcerous lips once kist 
No mortal may her spell resist ; 

Thus to her bower she beguiles ! 


Olympian banquet there regales ; 

Song, dulcet as Pelorian strains, 

And wine enchanted fire their veins ; 
Her beauteous bosom she unveils 
And wins them ere the darkness wanes. 


We women of the common Earth 
Have but its common gifts to give, 

Its love (by which alone we live) ; 

Its corn and wine for feast ; for mirth 
Its song — these have no charmed worth ; 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

What marvel that not vain her spell ? 
In their place our feet, homeward set, 
Had haply followed her to hell : 

Could ye at all forgive, forget 
O wives of Corinth ? — I know not yet. 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Through the 'power of the Genie of Love , by the glimmer 
Of the moon’s waning crescent , past fountains that shimmer , 
And rillets that gleam , balsams and thyme , 

/ft Arabian Granada’s Alhambrian prime , 

Moslem Princess , I steal through the thicket of roses , 

To the small fragrant garden the myrtle encloses , 

Wherein , ztf^ft Orion stands guard with his sword , 

I shall tryst with the Christian knight my own lord ; 
Eternity’s bliss scarce will vie with that hour’s , 

Queen Lindaraxa’ s red pomegranate bowers . 

Through a maze of delight all the fireflies are winging , 
^/ftZ bulbuls have lured a new transport for singing ; 
The perfume of haze-hidden flowers fills the air ; 

And the dim charmed dusk is athrob , aware 

He will come through the little vermilion wicket , 
{Concealed by the roses that climb from the thicket ;) 

In the minaret’s silence succeeding the call 
Of the night’s last muezzin , w/^ft darkness hides all ; 
And then every joy will wax faint before ours 
In the Queen Lindaraxa’ s red pomegranate bowers . 

Hark, his step ! — in my heart of the Princess no place is 
For dread lest he tire of my Moslem embraces ; 

Ev’n in “ Jannat al Mawa ” I know unto him 
The eyes of the Houris to mine will seem dim : 

All the transport of love in its sweet , stolen meetings , 

All the sweetness of love in its passionate greetings , 

All the kisses that love through all ages hath kissed , 

By some strange subtle nuance of rapture have missed 
The consummate incomparable joy that is ours 
In the Queen Lindaraxa’ s red pomegranate bowers . 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

T o his words all the words by all lovers' lips spoken 
Are wordless ; their voices ( impassioned or broken ) 

Are voiceless to his , which is quiet and deep 
As a midsummer' s ocean's that chanteth to keep 
T he wild tempest that beats in its breast still thereunder ; 
O'er La Vela's white terrace the stars peep and wonder 
How in such a delightsome diminutive space 
Where the tryst of two fairies could hardly find place , 
There can be such a great human love as is ours 
In the Queen Lindaraxa's red pomegranate bowers . 


63 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

A blaze of light, a dulcet sound, 

The Courts dance ; I am but aware 
Of one who doth my heart confound 
In shimmering samite ; debonair, 
Pearls in the glory of her hair ; 


Gold hair that crowns her more than queen 
And backward floats a dazzling snare, 

In meshes of enchanted sheen 
By sorcery woven ; wheresoe’er 
I move it moves before me there ; 

A mocking flame that lures my lord 
To follow ; with our knights I stand 
(O’er my heart’s passion keeping ward), 
While he and she, hand locked in hand 
Dance seguidil and saraband. 


A vengeful vehement fire of hell 
And outer darkness, life in me, 

And love demoniac, hard to quell, 

As maddened, outraged, dazed, I see 
Prevail that glittering sorcery. 


Earthquake and fire, my Heart, are o’er ; 
Storm past, and for the tempest’s roar 
The still small voice of love once more. 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Passions convulse not ; hushed all moan ; 
A closer self than that our own, 

Philippe’s, our lord’s, we know alone. 

If for our love’s sake we could die 
And so his love have help thereby 
We should not shrink, thou, Heart, and I. 

Death were the utmost agony, 

No more at all his face to see, 

Never again with him to be. 

Yet in the lone waste lands below, 

Where never flowers at springtime blow, 
For his sake joy were ours of woe. 

Ev’n thus no help to him could be, 

Royal must wed with royalty, 

And still apart were he and she. 

Is there no way that we may find 
To do him service ? Seeking blind, 
Through a dread maze we wind and wind 

What can we ? clue is none to guide ; 
Meseems, though scorned, still at his side 
Love serveth best : thus we abide. 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

See , Carlos , the real enchanted 

Red Castle where once when a child 
1 lived ; its gay garden was planted 
By winds from Arabia beguiled : 

And the Castle itself by two genii 
W as built { Sun and Frost ) long ago ; 

Of all “ Castles in Spain ” ever seen , / 

Not any so wonderful know . 

How often 1 wished 1 could draw it , 

( Though no drawing quite like it could be ;) 
But now just as I myself saw it 
My own little Carlos can see . 

While we look at its marvels together 
Fhe tale that the fairies one day 
Fold to me you shall hear , and then whether 
T ou think it is true you can say . 


Fhey said the Sun-Genie awaking , 

Ere the Vega below was astir , 

Fhis green height {then haze-hidden ;) mistaking 
For an islet of dawn in mid-air , 

On it raised a fair Castle {vermilion 
And white ;) with the clouds of the morn ; 

All finished , court, tower and pavilion , 

He wished it inside to adorn. 

While he sought some device , nor yet found it; 

Fhe mist rolled away ; the green height 
With his “ Chateau en Espagne ” that crowned it 
Shone forth on his wondering sight ; 


66 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Myriad gossamers far and near shimmered , 
Myriad dewdrops like gems glittered nigh ; 
Frail opaline films glistened , glimmered ; 
Golden rack floated low in the sky. 


Here then was the clue he had wanted ; 

Faery fretwork he fashioned at ease 

Gemmed filigree trellis enchanted , 

And , inside , he adorned it with these . 

gold rack crowned the pillars , portals ; 

Tinted arabesques everywhere wrought ; 

And many fair wonders , mortals 

To fashion could never be taught. 

A marvel of beauty , completed 

The cloud-castle stood ; but ere night 

His magical labour defeated , 

75Z> vanish from sight ; 

So he called the Frost- genie from under 
Guadarrama to come with his Art , 
freeze it to stone , ^#2 its wonder 
And beauty might never depart . 

within the Frost managed to harden 
And frescoed the walls with rare skill ; 

Then he went , and the Sun made this garden 
Outside near the streams on the hill ; 

Hesperian nymphs he persuaded 

To give him some grafts from their bowers ; 

And by orient winds he was aided 
With seeds of strange Syrian flowers. 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Then the winds chased the streamlets , that hither 
And thither ran , laughing , around ; 

Or fell in cascades , Az’J whither 

None sought for them , underground ; 

Through the fountains one after another 
Welling up in each court , — zzj to-day — 

you #//, Zz&£ Mother , 

/Fzzj fairies' tale true , should you say ? 


68 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

“ Affairs of State call you to Bourgogne ” — nay, 

Stay yet a little longer, Dearest, stay, 

If but until our Noel feast is past, 

For lacking you my heart holds twofold fast 
At festival ; see, I have suffered much, 

Coldness, neglect, humiliation such 
As lineage of mine had never borne, 

And quick in me, Castile oft laughs to scorn 
The weakness of my love that loves through all, 

Nor by its own keen steel self-slain doth fall ; 
Howbeit of weakest things most weak, among 
All strongest things not one as love is strong, 

Thus dominant o’er wrath and shame, again 
It yet entreats “ a little while remain.” 

With you through life, death, hell, I fain would go, 
But even to Bourgogne cannot, this you know ; 
Therefore stay with me, Philippe, — Husband, — stay, 
Yet you refuse, “ A woman’s love, you say, 

By importunity outwearies man ; 

Time, tide will wait no dalliance, nor can ; 

What are a few short weeks or more, or less, 

When State affairs of so strong import press f ” 

O God ! what can I ? sundering seas and wide 
Stretch now between us standing side by side. 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Unto the dust by sorrow 
Bowed down ; and dumb with woe ; 
Pent close in night whose morrow 
Ne’er dawneth ; even so, 

While in the green quadrangle 
Our court-musicians play, 

The close strait hands that strangle 
My life are thrust away. 


As charmed music welling 
From out enchanted ground, 
(Substance and sense dispelling 
By sorcery of sound ;) 

The strains rise, and the presence 
Of individual woe 
Becomes a subtile essence, 

That scarce as mine I know. 


Thus life hath, some brief hours, 
Illusive ease in me : 

Ye gods of ruth, ye Powers 
Of pity (if such be), 

Guard sorrow’s trance unshaken 
By memory’s trump supreme ; 

O let it ne’er awaken 
To find its dream a dream. 


70 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Midnight, the skies with pulsing fires are rife, 

Here the keen wind like an assassin’s knife 
Stabs through me, while alone athwart the snows 
I hasten forth ; my ladies sleep ; none knows, 

I follow Philippe — in me, as above, 

Is darkness, quick with pulsing fires of love. 

The outer dark no more extends apart, 

It merges in the night of my own heart, 

And drawn within its paramount fire, each fire 
Of heaven becomes a pulse of its desire ; 

Before this wild potential passion all 
The barriers of created things must fall, 

And sundering space remove, thus rendered free, 
There where I would, as lightning, I shall be : 
Nay, ev’n these locked gates give not place to love 
But bar me in th’ Alcazar’s entrance grove ; 

O hopeless hope, that lured me forth too late ! 
Were I to rouse the porters of the gate 
They dare not let me now pass out alone ; 

And woman-like I fall to feeble moan 
And futile sobs, here still in durance bound. 

On the keen wind is blown a hurried sound, 

My ladies have awaked, for me they seek ; 

They draw anear, they throng around me, speak ; 
— Strange words as in the tongue of some far land, 
Once known, forgotten, hard to understand ; — 
The former things are past away ; I know 
No longer anything but loss ; yet so 
With tears they strive a lava-fire to stem, 

They weep, implore me to return with them ; 

Tell me I shudder in the frozen cold, 

And do but wander in dream ; — a vain tale told ; 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Sleep hath, forsaken me long ; I feel no frost, 
Love burns within me, flame in darkness lost ; 
Nay, I return not, howsoe’er implored ; 

I go to Philippe, to my life, my lord. 


Like a tempestuous ocean 
Soft lulled at length to rest ; 
Becalmed, to tranquil motion, 

Love heaves within my breast ; 
And drowsily unclosing 
Mine eyes bend dreamily 
O’er the small life reposing 
A halcyon on the sea. 

My sweet, the bands prepared thee 
Were doubt and dark distress ; 
What god of pity spared thee, 
Swathed thee in happiness ? 

A gift of Father’s, never 
To be withdrawn, thou art ; 

Mine own, none else’s ever, 

Small heart of his own heart. 


7 2 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

In Bourgogne ; through dread night and fire 
I reach at length my heart’s desire ; 

After long thirst, here at your lips I drink ; 
And in the breaking day 

Back to their caves all births of darkness shrink, 
Or, bat-winged, flee away. 


Tell of yourself ; each trivial thing : 

In every blossom blooms the spring ; 
And in the strayling shell the very song 
Of the full Deep swells clear ; 

Double my joy ; thus doubly after long 
I shall see you and hear. 


In this our Eden once more, your head leant thus 
Back on my breast, we laugh for joy ; how fair 
The world is ; God’s new Paradise it seems 
Where former troubles are forgotten dreams ; 

In the sweet sunlight flitting through the air 
See, tiny gleeful lives, like flowers on wing ; 

The groves are loud with song, and in the heart of 
All the birds sing. 


“ Sit here (you say) in this green wild of roses ; 
Deep beneath crimson deep, 

Each glows, until the perfect damask closes 
Over the heart asleep. 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

“ Reign o’er these Syrian beauties their Sultana ; 
Shiraz and Babylon, 

Or gardens of Tunisian Ariana 
Ne’er boasted such an one. 

“ My rose of love, whose richer crimson foldeth 
In deeper depths aglow 

O’er the vermilion heart, that shut withholdeth 
Its perfect passion so. 

“ As when in charmed Arabian gardens planted 
Flowers bloomed by sorcery, 

A Princess you, within a rose enchanted, 

I Prince within a bee ; 

“ Now, at the bee’s kiss (mine) your heart uncloses 
And to its utmost deep 
I dive, my rose of love, my love of roses, 

Enfold me there and keep.” 


Most reverend Sirs, your fervid eloquence 
I hear with all esteem and deference, 

As the revered of Her, whose dying hest 
Bade you thus bear to me her heart’s bequest — 

(The fervent prayer that her Church yet might bless 
My soul with peace), — but this you ask of me 
Regretful I refuse, it may not be. 

Last eve at dark your embassy of death 
Entered our palace, and with dolorous breath 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Its mournful tidings unto us divulged, 

Leaving a daughter’s grief to be indulged : 

This morn in my dead Mother’s sainted name 
Ye seek me ; by her zeal would kindle flame 
On my soul’s altar ; now adjuring me 
To hear High Mass within mine oratory 
For her soul’s glory ; pardon me, nor shrine 
Nor pyx of that dread God she deemed divine 
Is hallowed there, no priest could celebrate 
Within its adytum, though alienate 
From truth I must appear thus in your sight, 

I cannot do my own heart this despite ; 

That shrine is sacred to one Lord alone, 

The Lord of Love, nor may of Him be known 
Whose fires I saw with tear-brimmed childish eyes, 
Consume beneath the blue Castilian skies 
Those human sacrifices offered there 
Unto his praise and honour ; pray you bear 
With my refusal ; your request forego ; 

I am a woman, Love is all I know. 


75 
























BOOK V 




JUANA OF CASTILE 

The voyage of Philippe and Juana with their retinues 
toward Spain. They are wrecked on the Cornish coast. 
Royally welcomed by Henry and his Court, Juana is by 
both much admired and beloved. Philippe’s disloyalties 
and her consequent suffering. 


78 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Storm and tumult ; the roaring of surf upon cliffs, white 
and sheer, 

Like a reed the ship wavers ; our mariners 5 hearts fail for 
fear ; 

Up to heav’n we are borne, and thence hurled as it were 
unto hell ; 

The swift flames of the lightnings o’erhead, as when Lucifer 
fell, 

Seem swords of the cohorts of God ; and the thunder 
resounds, 

As his voice in denouncing ; a horror of darkness confounds, 

While the Deep yawns to meet us descending ; again ere 
we wis 

We are borne up to heav’n from the depths of the soundless 
abyss ; 

Downward driven once more, hither, thither we drift ; and 
the night 

Beats upon us with tempest, defying our strongest men’s 
might. 

But at one with the flame-riven sky, with the waves and 
the wind, 

The quick life in me lives, one in passion, invincible, blind, 

Boundless, fathomless, travailing in darkness and storm 
none may quell ; 

In its strenuous pangs laying hold upon heaven and hell. 

Here at length is deliverance for love, where its tempests at 
will 

Sweep forth, unconfined by the mortal, (that oft in me still 

Is too weak, and too strait to sustain them ;) lo, under their 
sway 

The tumultuous elements merge in my life ; they are I ; I 
am they : 


79 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

As the star-fires strained forth with the fires of my soul, one 
with me, 

Through that night when I followed my lord, in the same 
wise the sea 

The wild wind, and the thunder-rent sky, with the storm in 
me meet ; 

One vehement tumult — yea so, with my very heart beat ; 

One mighty and dominant passion ; all depths, every 
height, 

Convulsed in one tempest that strains, toward my lord, 
through the night. 

’Mid the uproar there rings o’er the deck a loud shout from 
the helm, 

“ Breakers, breakers ahead ” ; and great billows wellnigh 
overwhelm 

The ship plunging in torrents of foam, shoreward driven by 
the blast ; 

Philippe comes to me ; round us there gather pale faces 
aghast ; 

Many cry unto Heaven for deliverance ; “ From what ? ” 
asks my heart ; 

Save that he still is fain of the sun, it were silent ; apart 

From the transient it beats ; in it panic and fear have no 
place ; 

Storm is calm, death is life unto love in its lord’s fast em- 
brace. 

’Mid the white, reeling mountains of surf, the ship pitches, 
they dash, 

(As hurled by the Cyclops upon her ;) the mast and keel 
crash ; 

Disabled she founders, then, lo, in the hurricane’s roar 

80 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Like a bubble of foam she is broken and cast upon shore : 

On the isles of the north we are wrecked ; the pale dawn 
on the strand 

Peers forth shivering, the while to our rescue rush many a 
band 

Of the brave Cornish seamen, and thus not a life of us lost, 

We are borne into haven, and harboured our crew tempest- 
tossed. 


From Henry of England all greeting ; 

Masques, tourneys, balls ; pastime with hound, 
Or with falcon ; new festival meeting 
New delay, by the wind still here bound. 
Kingly courteous, with knightly endeavour 
To please or divert, as we ride 
Through his wide Windsor Forest, he ever 
With smile and glad word seeks my side ; 

Shows some point of the falcon, or raises 
Some doubt of the bugle’s true tone, 

Or with chivalrous protest dispraises 
His Country and Court for our own. 


While adown his fair Thamis at leisure 
We glide through the green budding spring 
In purple-sailed state ; for my pleasure 
His minstrels are bidden to sing. 

At tilt with my favour, or lending 
His hand for the dance, of a high 
Kingly chivalry, kindness unending, 

And queenly recognisant I. 

F 


81 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

But through all there exists not another 
Save my own king, my own knight for me ; 
Him alone I perceive and what other 
May queen of his chivalries be. 


At eve when the Courts meet, resplendent 
In broidered and jewelled array, 

Cloth of gold, eastern tissues ; ascendent 
(Like a sun amid stars gone astray) 

Among all beauteous faces his face is ; 

And ’mid all knightly graces, to sight 
As a god’s amid mortals his grace is ; 
Cynosure of all eyes, and delight. 

Day buds, and night closes, but through him 
For mine ; my whole world it is he ; 

While of him, and by him, and to him 
Alone the life liveth in me. 


In Andalusian Courts, (of me 
Oblivious,) on his way 
From other bowers, my lord sang free 
A catch of some light lay. 


“ Another nest, another year ! 

Love hath a swallow’s wing ; 

The summer flowers are fading here 
It seeks a budding spring.” 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

And now beneath these vernal skies, 

In yonder maple grove 

He lilts, grown tired of northern eyes, 

A further strain thereof. 

“ Another nest another year ; 

Too pale this island sun ; 

The joys of spring are palling here 
Elsewhere they must be won.” 

O heart of mine that hearest now, 

That heardest then, alone, 

Sick, shuddering, loathing ; would that thou 
Wert frozen into stone. 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Blow east , blow west , blow far and near , 

Blow south and north ; 

Blow inland for awhile , then veer 
And once again blow forth : 

Blow here and there , blow to and fro . 

Blow warm and cold , blow high and low : 

Then, wearied , mj? to blow . 

Or winged , or wingless , who shall bind 
Or say thee “ 2V# ” or “ Nay” O wind ? 

Blow east and west ; blow south and north ; 
Man's love is wind ; 

Fold wing in hawthorn groves ; fleet forth 
And myrtle bowers find : 

Love far and near , /ow Z^r*? 2i*r* ; 

Or to love at all forbear ; 

O woman's heart what care ? 

So light , so slight , jo fugitive 
Scorn were too heavy a meed to give. 


84 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Too late my lord ; what would you with me now ? 
Our Alpha and our Omega are said, 

And on our lips their fervent speech is dead ; 

Yea, though in Love’s high name we still should vow, 
The words were vacant being dumb at heart ; 
Therefore I pray depart. 

Three dim, pale moons from these chill British skies 
Peered down upon me, as so oft alone, 

Forsaken of you on some slight pretext shown, 

I lay through weary nights, with sleepless eyes 
That saw yours kindling all the darkling hours 
With light in other bowers. 

Wild passions tore my breast, ere in disdain 
(Stabbed to the heart through woman’s rightful pride) 
I rose imperial to cast aside 
The marriage robe, abhorring any stain, 

And scorning to be scorned ; while love’s own fire 
Driven back, became its pyre. 

O would that we had drunk the seething wine, 

The cup of Ocean’s mighty sorcery, 

The only loving-cup left you and me ; 

Then had my heart been yours and your heart mine ; 
Whelmed in deep waters, joy had been by us 
Refound — sought vainly thus. 


85 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

In love's new kingdom here alone , 

As changed into a queen of stone , 

I sit in the chill dark , behold , 
jFVflw ttzj; lips there breaks nor sigh 
Nor moan , 720 yearning cry 

Stirs the dread silence : mute and cold 
Seated enthroned with upright head 
Like Barbarossa buried dead , 

I reign while dynasties wax old . 

dominations of the day 
Must with the sunset pass away ; 
Monarchs of life must abdicate , 

But here , through an eternal night , 
Quitting my transient throne of light , 
Perpetually I sit in state ; 

A Queen of Death , Proserpine , 

/ this kingdom which is mine , 
Against all powers of life and fate . 


86 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Lullaby, lullaby, 

Love lies uneasily, 

Helped though from mortal breath, 
Hushed in the arms of death, 

111 dreams around it throng ; 

But I a slumber-song 

Sing thus, if so may be 

That they from hence may flee, 

Lullaby. 


Lullaby, lullaby ; 

Sleep soft, O love in me ; 

Hadst thou indeed been drowned 
Deep in the storm’s Profound, 
Thou hadst found better rest, 

As on a Mother’s breast 
Rocked by the heaving sea ; 
Dreams ne’er disquieting thee. 

Lullaby. 

0 


Lullaby, lullaby, 

Stir not so restlessly ; 

Yea, as Koheloth saith, 

“ Love is as strong as Death ” ; 
Bursting its thrall, behold, 

Chilled through with mortal cold, 
Shudd’ring thou breakest free, 
Quick once again in me : 

Lullaby. 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Vain is my lullaby ; 

Vainly would sing the sea ; 
Love in no depths can drown 
Sunken though fathoms down ; 
Neither may slumber-song 
(Howso its spell be strong) 
Charm it to sleep ; for thee 
Death hath not, heart of me, 

Lullaby. 


BOOK VI 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Juana and Philippe in Granada. Coronation festivals. 
Juana’s continued misery. Evenings with her children. 
Her last passionate appeal to Philippe insultingly repulsed. 
Final rupture. 


90 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Granada holds high festival ; 

The dazzling air is musical 

With bells that from San Pablo’s tower peal ; 

Glad shouts of “ Santiago ” ring 
Through the great square, as chosen King 
And Queen of our Espana by Castile, 

Beneath the royal canopy 

We pass with pomp and priestly pageantry. 

Crowned King and Queen of Spain, and known 
Each unto each as such alone : 

In San Benito, (robe of royalty,) 

Like one led forth in deathly thrall, 

I see, or great, or trivial, all, 

Each sense but quickened by keen agony ; 

The glittering file, the gorgeous train, 

Yet more resplendent through the night of pain. 

On Arab steeds (enmeshed in gold 
Hung with strange orient coins of old) 

Princes, Hidalgos, Dues and Condes ride ; 
White-mailed Castilian knights before 
“ Knights of the Cross ” and “ Toison d’Or.” 

Our Cortes with the “ Nodo ” at my side. 

Gold trumpets blare — glad shouts arise, 

Philippe and I bow, smile, in regal wise. 

Granada holds high festival, 

And more than ever musical 

Is every bannered way and bowered street, 

With cool soft plash and murmurous sound 
Of crystal waters that abound ; 

Or bubbling, babbling, through the noonday heat 

9i 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Or in gold conduits to and fro 
Rippling, pure, cold, as Guadarrama snow. 

From wreathen fountains Xeres streams 
In showers of sun-transmuted beams : 

And purple as Love’s vintage Penas flows : 
With jewelled goblets pages stand 
Proffering to all with ready hand. 

On miradores, where Moorish arras glows, 
Assemble in their loyal grace 
Espana’s noblesse — I see every face. 

Lutes, harps, guitars, make melody ; 
Between the bursts of jubilee 
My lips find festal words for Philippe’s ear ; 
They speak not of their quenchless thirst, 
The waters flow on as at first : 

I suffer in Love’s Inferno here 
Amid full streams like Tantalus : 

King, Queen, we smile, what is it unto us ? 


Athwart the sapphire midnight sky, 
The moon, her pale still face aglow, 
Moves, ’mid her train of stars on high, 
And in the Xenil’s lucent flow 
Mirrored, holds phantom court below. 

From myrtle and from ilex grove 
There peals tumultuous melody ; 

92 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

The poignant passion and joy thereof, 
(An ecstasy of agony :) 

Fulfils the silent heart in me. 


From bower and brake the whole night long 
Impetuous in its exigence 
Unsilenceable swells the song, 

Aggressive in its vehemence, 

Its strange inspired violence. 

Are these but nightingales that sing ? 

That hold enthralled, as by some spell, 

The moonlit dark with strains that ring 

Through Love’s own heaven, through Love’s own hell, 

Whose joy and woe they strive to tell. 

Nay, Philomela never sang 
A song like this by Phocian seas ; 

Haply on Lesbian shores it rang 
From lips no mortal kiss could ease, 

Nor waters of the world appease. 


High noon, Seviglia reposed ; 
Functions of state fulfilled 
My lord had, with his arras closed, 
Retired ; all sound was stilled. 
Amidst the Glorieta’s bowers 
In shadow from the sun, 


93 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

I strayed from long siesta-hours 
Where rest for me was none. 

Under a purple Tulip-tree 
I saw, ere well aware, 

His royal mantle glimmer, he 
With his Basque queen stood there : 

That order of the “ Golden Fleece ” 

He, laughing, hers had named, 

Shone on his breast (Hush thee, Heart, peace !) 
While like hell-fire flamed 
(Still buckled in his cap) the red 
Carbuncle, given by me : 

As low o’er her he bent his head, 

(Peace, Heart, what aileth thee ?) 

The branches swayed, his face was shown, 

His eyes on her eyes gazed ; 

Lightnings of scorn flashed through mine own 
And sight and sense were dazed. 


94 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

It is the fairies' fete to-night ; 
Film-zvinged they fly from Araby , 

( Afar o'er an enchanted sea ;) 

And this one eve of all the year 
In our own Andalus appear ; 

Where sometimes they , by mortal sight , 
Are seen in mists of opal light , 

Beneath the golden-haloed moon , 

( Which will be risen very soon ;) 
Would Rina like to come with me ? 
There is a chance that we might see. 


On tip- toe softly , side by side , 

We pass the dim Giralda tower , 

Then through the Glorieta's bower 
Steal onward , till in silver haze 
T he fish-pool gleams ; there all the fays 
At festival we find , and hide 
Lest they should see us as they glide 
Around the blossomed marge , or sing , 
Or, light as spindrift , dance in ring ; 
Then o'er the reeds and flag-flowers flit , 
And tired , 0/z water-lilies sit . 


elfin-laughter now close by 
T hey wend {nor see us) to the groves , 
Where feast is laid in dim alcoves ; 
Quite strange our silver-birches seem ! 
Like trees in an enchanted dream 
They shimmer 'neath a magic sky , 
Glint , glimmer , # j fays draw nigh : 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

On stools of purple fungi see 
Circles of these sit merrily 
At mushroom-tables , gold and red , 

With faery delicacies spread. 

Of star-beams , chased , fA* 

silver gossamer the plates ; 

Of moonshine made the choicest cates , 

And crystal dew for wine they drink 
That glistens mauve and green and pink ; 
While some regale themselves on air , 

(So we to join them should not care.) 

But when the feast is o'er, enthroned 

The Queen (with moonbuds crowned and zoned) 

Will sit in her own opal bower , 

Then comes the magic Wishing-Hour. 

When she her moon-beam-sceptre’ s sheen 
Holds forth , the watching fairies then 
Wish in themselves once and again ; 

And when she waves it, whatsoever 
Each wished is granted him or her ; 

Those mortals too who then , unseen , 

Wish likewise and behold the Queen , 

Of both their wishes unexpressed 
Will also find themselves possessed ; 

So let us think what ours shall be, 

We are well hidden and should see. 


r 


96 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Philippe is absent ; in the joyous south 
Under or sun or moon 

I find no ease ; assuagement none of drouth 
And wander, late and soon, 

Through the Alcazar’s gardens ; changed and banned 
By Ahriman they seem 
The accursed pleasance of some orient land 
I pace in evil dream. 

Pomegranate groves all day, in sunlit bloom, 

Like flames of Tartarus flare ; 

And gleam like groves of Proserpine’s dire doom 
All night on my despair. 

Yet well-springs bubble from depths underground ; 
And limpid streamlets flow 

Through moss-grown alleys (winding with soft sound 
And laughing as they go). 

Aware of one sole vehement desire 
For water, at fount and rill 
I seek, consumed with quenchless thirst and fire, 
Assuagement vainly still : 

But long I leave not even these unsought ; 

The ladies of my train 

Dread to approach me, deem my brain distraught, 

As ever I wend again ; 

Yet the gazelles ne’er timorous from me glide ; 

The youngest fear me not, 

And often wander softly at my side 
Through grove and greensward plot. 

By some dumb faculty they understand 
That as for water in drought 


G 


97 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

They seek, so I ; and with cool tongues my hand 
They fondle, nor misdoubt. 


Up through the aspen-groves whose every leaf 
For joy of the sweet sunlight laughs, a brief 
Glad sound of passing melody ascends ; 

The King some new festivity attends. 

My ladies on the verdant terrace too 
Are gay, their cunning shuttle slipping through, 
While I here in my Mother’s oratory 
Heart-broken, Lord of Love, return to thee. 
Abandoning Thy ways I wandered far 
Where hell and hatred, fire and darkness are ; 

I am not worthy ev’n to name Thy name ; 

The passions of my heart all else overcame 
As I departed then, my Lord, from Thee 
Hast thou now likewise thus forsaken me ? 

’Mid a wide waste I find nor path nor track, 

Whence I have gone astray, to lead me back : 

Thou knowest, (Thou who knowest the hearts of all,) 
That howsoe’er of evil Powers the thrall, 

My love full fain had given its life for him 
It loved : full fain, to fill up to the brim 
His cup, had drained its own ; poured out as dross 
Its gold to profit him nor felt the loss ; 

There was no way to serve, or Thou knowest well 
I then had found it, though in utmost hell. 

There is no way, thus seeking still in vain 
My last hope dies, and over heart and brain 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Darkens the desperate anguish of despair, 

That drives me on toward madness (well aware 
Of whither I go, and hailing it afar 
As watchers of the night the morning star) ; 

“ Madness ” would seem a very heaven to me, 

The covert glances (I fail not to see), 

The King’s, the Regent’s surmised — hope or fear ? 

My ladies’ whispers (unmeant for my ear ;) 

Did these touch truth, too brief eternity 
Wherein to thank Thee, for this agony 
Were then delirium, and, in frenzied dream 
Forsaken of him I love I should but seem. 

Nay from no god such mercy have I had, 

Too well I know Thou knowest I am not mad. 

Even Thee I doubt in my great misery, 

Meseems it was a fiend-like cruelty 
To fashion human love so capable 
Of highest heaven and of lowest hell, 

And cast it forth from Thee, an aidless birth, 

To drift toward either on the passions of earth : 

What fault is Philippe’s, that created so, 

His love from heart to heart doth ebb and flow 
Nor any steadfast anchorage finds in mine ? 

If blame be his that blame is sevenfold Thine. 

Nay, Lord, behold, is not the fault mine own ? 

Amiss I loved ; and love at best, alone 
(Howe’er a woman esteem all else as dross) 

Suffices not a man, leaves sense of loss : 

Mine, lacking found, contents not with its kiss 
And against Thee its Maker cries for this ; 

Why hast Thou made his love and my love thus f 
It is Thy will not ours that sunders us. 

99 


> 

) 


> 


> 

> ) 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

The wail of countless hearts, Lord, with mine own 
Arises, like the dumb tempestuous moan 
Of midnight seas ; Invisible, Divine 
Thou art responseless, grantest us no sign, 

And in my human anguish unto me 
Thou dost become a Dream, illusory, 

The shadow of a god ; mythic, afar ; 

Yea, life, death, earth, heaven, hell, all things that are 
Whelmed in the seething passion of my heart, 

As in a maelstrom, are unknown apart ; 

None — nothing — save my lord exists for me — 

I am alone throughout eternity. 


ioo 




JUANA OF CASTILE 

So my Carlos wants a story 
Of adventure , valour , glory , 

Or of magic like those told 
By Scheherazade of old . 

It should last , had he his way , 

Just for ever and a day : 

Ne'er in Shiraz had he slept, 

Through the thousand and one had kept 
Wide awake ; when all were o' er 
He had asked as many more ; 

But as that might weary Mother — 

He won't press for any other , 

One — not long — the rest must keep 
Caliph Carlos then will sleep . 

Mother knows a wondrous story 
Of adventure , valour , glory , 

Magic likewise , all in one , 

And when ended yet not done . 

Listen , — it will be quite true , — 

0 / Mendoza knew. 

O'er a vast and shoreless sea , 

Waste on waste of mystery , 

Dread and perilous , he sailed , 

Fearless where his crew's heart failed : 

Unknown realms , Paradises , 

Isles of gold , groves of spices , 

Drew him forward on his quest ; 

Sure that land lay in the West. 

On — o'er water-wastes for ever , 

Golden isle or land gleamed never : 

IOI 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Famine , shipwreck , death were near , 
his crew in wrath and fear 
Cried upon him , “ Forth from Spain 
By mirage of thine own brain 
Fhou hast lured us ” ; on him railed , 

“ Dreamer , Fool , thou hast outsailed 
All that in the world can be 
Into boundless vacancy ; 

For thy garden-paradises , 

Vaunted gold and gems and spices , 
Shoreless leagues of weedy wrack 
Ere we mutiny , tar# back.” 

But he in his strong reliance 
On the second sight of science , 
of genius that had led , 

/ZVM words as if unsaid ; 

Rallied , cheered them on the quest 
Sure still land lay in the West. 

And at length his eagle gaze 
{After weary nights and days) 

By Friana's lights that gleamed 
Saw u a shore” he said — nor dreamed 
Nearer , balmy wafts of spices 
Brought the crew's lost Paradises 
Back in hope : — at dawn the strand 
Dimly loomed ' mid shouts of “ Land.” 1 

“ A Castilla y a Leon 
Nuevo mundo dio Colon : ” 

More than all his dauntless quest 
Sought or hoped for in the West ; 


102 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Crowned it ; lo , his sail was juried 
On the shore of our new World ; 

For that isle of “ Ocean-Sea ” 

Led , an “ Open-Sesame ” 

Unto marvels manifold 
Ne'er to be in one tale told ; 

Fhey would take a thousand others 
And would tire a thousand mothers 
But while Carlos goes to sleep 
All the rest will safely keep . 

Note . Rodrigo di Triana, it has been said, was the first 
in the Columbus expedition to perceive strange lights that 
moved to and fro ; but Columbus himself discerned a 
shore. 


103 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Philippe, O stand not silent thus and cold ; 

Lean down and draw me to thee as of old : 

Here, in thy presence, like the white waste moon 
In dazzling skies of sunlit summer noon 
My life is, and I shiver with strange frost 
At mid of June : are the lost years so lost 
That we can find them not together now ? 

This is love’s hour ; all lesser passions bow 
Before it (as before the wild west wind 
The forest trees) ; shall any its will bind, 

Or spurn its sway ? were I now at thy feet 
In its most utter abandon, bitter sweet, 

What dead Castilian queen might dare arise 
And look upon me with contemptuous eyes ? 

Love is too great for scorn, too high ; disdain 
At loftiest cannot reach it, were it lain 
In lowest dust ; no shame in any wise 
Can touch it, save ’tis shamed in its own eyes. 

Come back my own beloved, come back to me, 

I stretch these vacant yearning arms for thee, 

Ev’n toward the Lamia’s Libyan bowered strand ; 
Full well her witching charms I understand, 

The charmless lack in me, well, all too well ; 

What couldst thou ? for thou hadst no counter-spell ; 
Yet her love with its strange and sorcerous glow, 

Its subtle fires, its changeful ebb and flow, 

Content thee not, nor is in any clime, 

Nor was nor shall be through the lapse of time, 

Any to love thee quite so utterly 
With such almighty love as this in me. 

Will a man leave the soundless fiery deeps 
Of Sirius’ passion, for the flame that sweeps 
104 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

A dazzling meteor-splendour o’er the skies 
Then suddenly ebbs out no more to rise ? 

Or follow many a wandering marish-fire 
That lures him on until he sink in mire ? 

Coldly you laugh and put my arms aside 
Replying with light words that but deride ; 

“ Ay, if you will ; ever the new allures 
My way of love is mine and yours is yours : 

What bee for ever doats upon one flower ? 

Or finds its honey in a single bower ? 

Your wild intensities of straitened love 
Mine knows not, — cares not for — is weary of ; 

It seeks a wider range ; full many a sweet 
It fain would taste, tires of one bowered retreat ; 
Fret me no more, those regions where we played 
At king and queen of love, illusive fade 
Before Espana’s realms ; an end to dreams ! 
Henceforth let us acquit us as beseems 
Castile and our imperial throne of Spain ; 

Call your duenas, nor thus here remain.” 

My lips refuse to utter a reply 

More dead to me than had I seen him die 

My lord is ; thus insulted, love falls slain, 

And my heart meets his scorn with cold disdain. 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

' The next part of that story 
My Caliph claims to-night ; 

Of Colon's world much more he 
Would hear , till it is light . 
Another voice ! another ! 

A dark — a golden head 

Peeps out ! “ Tell us too , Mother , 

We hid in Carlie's bed.” 

Well just this one time listen , 
Though tiny folk should sleep 
Or when the dewdrops glisten , 

And early fledglings cheep 
They miss it all , wo/ waking ; 

But now afar the dark 
Is unto daylight breaking 
O'er Colon's anchored bark ; 

With him , all four together , 

In the New World we land , 

Near palms , jo high they feather 
Like green clouds o' er the strand ; 
And 'mid the green are growing , 
large as melons , ww/j ; 

is flowing 

With wine from little cuts. 

We follow through yet higher 
Strange woods , that seem to rise 
To heaven , and there take fire 
And flame along the skies , 

In red and golden flowers ; 

Plants , trees in air strike root ; 
Sky-gardens , hanging bowers 
That bear delicious fruit ; 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

There butterflies are winging 
As big as birds , and birds 
Like magic gems are singing ; 

Gay parrots without words , 

And troops of monkeys chatter ; 

These swinging from each bough 
Strange fruits far downward scatter ; 
We catch some ; and wend now 
Through plains , where rabbits browsing 
Are large as lambs and sheep ; 

We pass without arousing 

Myriads of cranes asleep 

Here kind black people meet us 

Unto whose wondering eyes 

We seem “ white gods " ; they greet us 

As “ dwellers from the skies A 

We taste their roasted “ guana " 

Which , though a snake , is nice ; 

And eat a crowned “ anana " 

(. Pine-apple of Paradise ). 

T hen sail , — or are we dreaming ? — 

In hollowed caravels 

O'er gulfs whose sands are gleaming , 

Pearls hidden in their shells . 

Some fishes we hear singing , 

And others have four eyes ; 

Some o' er calm waves are winging 
In whose clear depth there lies 
A magic garden , planted 
With marvels of the seas ; 

Flowers and fruits enchanted , 
Sponge-bushes , — 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

But night draws on, and under 
Red cliffs we now spread sail 
Back here again ; 1 wonder 
If we went in a tale ? 


BOOK VII 



JUANA OF CASTILE 

The brief illness of Philippe, during which Juana never left 
him. His death at the early age of twenty-six, Juana at 
the time being only twenty-five. Her refusal to believe him 
dead, or to leave his side, excepting when lured away by a 
specious pretext during the process of embalming. She 
subsequently causes the body to be removed to her own 
apartments (persisting that Philippe only slept, or had 
fallen into a trance). Later — refusing all idea of its inter- 
ment, she treats it as if still living, even commanding the 
Cortes to do their customary homage to it, as to Philippe 
when alive. ... At the end of one year she abandons 
hope. 


no 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

How flushed he is ! Hyperion-like he seems, 
Pillowed on western clouds in troublous dreams, 
The crimson glow of wild and ominous night 
Firing his face against the fleecy white, 

And ravelled in restless sleep his golden locks. 
Uneasily he stirs ; the vision mocks, 

From his great beauty risen unwittingly, 

As with strange dread, him lying thus I see. 

The Court physicians laugh my fear to scorn, 

All will be well, they tell me, with the morn ; 
Would God I knew it ! in a woman’s breast 
Love waxes apprehensive ; cannot rest ; 

Harbours forebodings baseless, oft times quails 
At shadows like a craven : reason fails 
With soothing voice, and wisest word, to charm 
Its dread to sleep, or lull its wild alarm. 

• • • • • 

“ So slight an ill, none need to watch ” ; but I 
Still linger : in the ante-chamber lie 
The lords-in-waiting, at his call ; and sleep 
Now thralls him heavily (as one drugged deep 
With hemlock), — baleful sleep that brings no rest, 
But weighs like some malarial vapour pressed 
On weary-lidded eyes and labouring brain, 

Stifling alone full consciousness of pain. 

How hot he is, his hands flung out for ease 
O’er the wrought coverlet, are flames in these 
Of mine ; and on my mouth his glowing mouth 
Is arid with the heat of desert drouth. 

Left at his side in the lowered sconce’s light 
The golden ice-bowl glimmers on my sight : 

These hands and lips of mine, that long unsought, 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Nor joy nor ease of love to him have brought, 

At length, in this his slumber, lend me aid 
To do him service ; on the piled ice laid, 

Cold thus as driven snows, they clasp his hands, 
Cling to his lips ; he speaks, “ As unto sands, 

Torrid with tropic heat, cool rainfall, such 
Lady to me thy cool sweet mouth and touch.” 

His Lamian love he sees, and suddenly 

The cruel vehement fire of jealousy 

Leaps to my lips, burns through my frozen hands, 

And at his side a ruthless woman stands, 

Who fain would now in lieu of her last kiss 
With venomed philtre quench his drouth, yet this 
Were love’s chief shame ; O small, weak heart in me, 
Shall thy lord thirst nor water have from thee ? 

Nay, whatso’er his dreams, thus seeking blind 
He shall ev’n so thy full assuagement find. 

Softly he sleeps — wavering athwart the night. 

The wild grey shadowy dawn with fitful light, 

Fills the dim chamber, and ’mid gloom and gleam 
The blazoned figures of the arras seem 
To quicken and stir — yea once like unto these 
In firelight glamour lived Gand’s tapestries ; 

So long ago — aeons and aeons ago, — 

When love was joy, not madness of wild woe. 

Some other woman there it must have been 
Who dreamed in her sweet fantasy I ween, 

She is since dead and now, behold, betwixt 
Her and myself there is a great gulf fixt, 

I cannot pass forth unto her, nor she, 

Strive as she may, ever return to me, 

1 12 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Yet as she saw my heart still seeth well ; 

Still seeth well, while here in other wise 
The Moorish arras quickens, and mine eyes 
Behold the Cid’s emblazoned Triumph move, 

’Mid sweeping shadows ; ere I wit thereof 
The silken maidens sing, the zithers play ; 

Soft as aerial song the Cid’s own lay 
Floats through the chamber, and my lips retake 
The cadence as lullaby, for nigh to wake 
My lord turns, tosses feverishly, and fain 
I thus would soothe him to soft sleep again ; 

“ Si es Espanol 
Don Rodrigue, 

Espanol fue el, 

Fuente andalla.” 

Now ghastly through the glimmering dawn, in death 
The mailed Cid rides, erect, but draws not breath ! 

Woe, woe, ’tis Philippe who thus rides meseems 
Through the cold fitful glooms and timorous gleams, 
And I, Ximena, wraith-like at his side, 

Follow my life that in his life hath died! 

Slumbering my lord groans, dominant my fear ! 

O God, if he should die ! have pity, hear, 

Thou knowest how filled full of bitterness 
Are all my years ; how lone and comfortless 
Are all my weary nights and weary days, 

Yet joy is left me, seeing still his face, 

Hearing his voice, although in his embrace 

No more I lie ; albeit I know past doubt 

That light loves from his heart have cast mine out ; 

Yea though my life is girt with the strange shame 

h 1 1 3 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Of women scorned (despite the imperial claim 
Of its high birth crushed down into the dust, 
And from all rights of love and honour thrust) ; 
Yet it is life, for still on its dark ways 
The light of his life shines ; as one who prays 
Wildered in woe’s extremity, I cry, 

“ Take him not from my sight, let him not die ; 
Nay, anything but that : blind death’s despair ; 
For then the Universe around me were 
One vast void waste, the sole existence left 
Mine own, distraught with loss, of all bereft 
And ever seeking through a dawnless night 
The life that was its life, its world, its light, 
Great Love, Lord God, I ask not Heaven’s bliss 
Nor ease from hell so Thou but grant me this.” 


Drouth and delirious pain 
Through the long hours of night, 
Nor cometh any ease 
Unto my lord with light. 

Over his fevered couch 
Through the dim dawn I see 
In carven beatitude 
Of crucifixion, He 
The Church’s Love Divine ; 

If such, O Christ, Thou art, 

Be pitiful to mine : 

Be pitiful as Thou 
Thyself upon the throne 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Of highest Heaven thus 
Didst reign supreme, alone ; 

That Heaven where love, behold, 
May suffer in the stead 
Of its beloved, and give 
Life by its life-blood shed ; 

As palms of Paradise, 

Esteeming every pang ; 

Beneath that dire eclipse 
We, too, who love would hang, 
And do but envy thee 
Thy passion and Thy cross, 

Thy souPs dread travail ; as gain 
Would likewise count all loss 
For such supremest bliss ; — 

Yea, too, would face unmoved, 
The powers of hell for this. 

Beneath the shameful rood 
(Thy throne of agony) ; 

A river of life flows forth 
To Thy beloved from Thee ; 

Yet thou permittest not, 

That we for ours should dip 
Into its soundless depth, 

Even the finger-tip ; 

Here at Thy crucifix 
My heart cries out on Thee, 
While racked with cruel throes 
My love, my lord, I see, 
Powerless to bear his pangs, 

To soothe, or from them save ; 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Lo, Thou hast kept the one 
Chief joy that heart can crave ; 
Crown me with Thy sharp crown, 
Grant me to share Thy death, 

Let me thus bring him ease, 

And life, by my last breath. 

Wild words, wild prayer and vain ; 
Supreme still even in this, 

Thy dominant love to mine 
Cedes nothing of its bliss ; 

“ Help Thou, then, Christ ! ” I cry — 
But silent over me 
Bends in beatitude 
Thy face of agony. 

And dubious now my heart 
Upon itself cries out 
That, blind in its wild woe, 

And passion of dark doubt, 

It nigh had cursed Thee ; 

Yea love is known of love ; 

Thine ne’er hath sought its own, 

It hath no thought thereof ; 

To this dread mystery 
Some clue — though here unknown — 
May, with the mystic key 
Of Death, be Thine alone. 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

He suffers not ; for this in its great woe 
My heart gives thanks ; unconscious to and fro 
He tosses ever, and his breast oft heaves, 

As doth a fluctuant sea the tempest leaves ; 

While my whole life, that stands at gaze, is wrought 
Into one anguished tension, passing thought ; 

Exists but in his lapsing life ; ebbs, flows 
With it alone, beyond it nothing knows : 

Erfurt’s great leech has now abandoned hope, 

But love must cherish it for strength to cope 
With madness. 


In the gleaming dawn he lies 
Pale now and still, his unbeholding eyes 
Bent ever as in blind appeal on mine ; 

His hand in my hand stirs with no mute sign 
Of conscious need, but oft doth idly shift 
And waver, (like a small white spar adrift 
To which some drowning hope clings :) scarce aware 
My heart repeats — repeats — the same wild prayer : 

“ Let all be well with him if death must be, 

But he loved life, O give him life for me,” 

And blind despair goads faith into the shrine 
Of Love, as God, Omnipotent, Divine. 

More pallid with each lapsing hour he grows 
And moveth never, yet hath no repose ; 

Each stir of lip or eyelid, as I gaze, 

Each subtle change, each tremor of life that strays 
Athwart his face (though faint and swiftly sped 
As is the shadow of a wind-blown shred 
Of floating thistle-down) sways heavily 
The balance-beam of all life is to me : 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

At length he moves, and seeking to arise 
Uplifts himself — half consciously his eyes 
Rest upon mine, then sighing soft and deep, 
Overspent he sinketh back in tranquil sleep. 
Hope gazes dumb with joy no thought can tell 
For if he slumber now all will be well. 


Many around his couch draw nigh, 

His slumber is so deep 

That all misdeem him dead, but I, 

I know he doth but sleep. 

The Court physicians, at my word, 

With close ear on his breast 
Hearken ; they say no pulse is heard, 

That life hath ebbed to rest. 

Upon his heart mine own I lean 
And listen ; loud and clear, 

Above a cataract’s uproar, e’en 
Its least throb I should hear ; 

He is not cold unto my cheek ; 

There stirs a pulse at length, 

(A burnt moth’s wing that flutters, weak ;) 
In sleep he will gain strength. 

I watch beside him and I wait ; 

Erfurt’s great leech draws near ; 

As over waters that abate, 

Remote his voice I hear. 


118 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

“ The slumber of the King is deep 
“ Beseech you, Madame, rest, 

“ Or outworn nature lacking sleep 
“ Must fail your heart’s behest ; 

“ I shall arouse you should he wake.” 
Thus I withdraw awhile 
If so be slumber, for his sake, 

Mine eyes may too beguile. 


I sit as frozen in some deathly dream, 

At Philippe’s couch ; dim forms pass to and fro, 

So they approach us not they do but seem 
Shadows that come and go. 

Sad strains that well might break the world’s glad heart 
Wail dirge-like as at dread funereal rite, 

But in the world’s heart mine hath now no part ; 

I listen while (alone, 

A fossil-life, entombed in glacial night ;) 

It stirs not, changed to stone. 

How long, how long he sleeps ; it seems to me 
I watch throughout a dire eternity ; 

O God ! that he would wake ! “ Why kneel ye here 
Ye Kings-at-Arms as by a royal bier ? 

Who hath brought thus Espana’s crown and sword ? 
Bear them away, they will but fret your lord 
When he awakes. I pray you, now retire.” 

Some clue to this strange mystery I require, 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Around me my duenas weeping stand ; 

To lead me forth my Father takes my hand ; 
The grave physicians unto us draw near ; 

“ Madame (they say) no further grief can fear, 
And hope its last sad word hath longtime said ; 
His Majesty hath many hours been dead ; 
Beseech you accept the reverend sympathy 
Of our own sorrow, and now leave it free 
To render, as becomes his royal state, 

All funeral obsequies inviolate . 55 

Nay, ye are blind, the King but sleeps ; behold, 

Approach and touch his hand, he is not cold ; 

It is the Queen’s will that he should be borne 
To her apartments, for she laughs to scorn 
The Court’s vain sorrow, and, alone, will keep 
A tireless watch until he wake from sleep. 


Alone with me ; my own alone again, 

But like a drowned man, in my bosom lain ; 

0 Philippe, now thou art thus, of that before 
Between us our love only doth remain. 

All else is like a distant tempest’s roar 
That left us wrecked upon this halcyon shore. 

The while thou liest stirless, mute and blind, 
These serpent-coils around my heart unwind, 
And the fond words by woman’s pride unsaid, 
The lost endearments it disdained to find, 

1 lavish on thee, for thou art as dead, 

And thus we are once more as newly wed. 

120 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

All softly lest thy tranquil sleep I break, 

From thy cold lips my long long drouth I slake ; 
And feast my heart from famine on thy face ; 

In trembling miser hands thy locks I take 
And strain thee close, Beloved, in my embrace ; 
Mine own alone again by Love’s dear grace. 


Who sets at naught my royal word 
That none should watch the King with me 
The portal arras was not stirred 
Yet in the lowered light I see 
A woman enter noiselessly. 

I shudder with unearthly fear, 

So like some lovely Shade she seems 
As through the dark she draws anear ; 
Down to her feet her long hair gleams 
As moonlight in Hadean dreams : 

White poppies loose and intertwined, 

She bringeth to the royal bed, 

And in strange passion, fierce and blind, 
(Consuming swiftly, ghostly dread,) 

I stand o’er him by her deemed dead. 

“ Woman, or Shade, — from hence depart, 
None may approach the King save me ; ” 
My words are very calm, my heart 
A lava-storm ; for, lo, ’tis she 
Who lured my lord by sorcery. 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Half hidden in her shimmering hair, 

(Yet long and glorious as of old ;) 

How still she stands — how strangely fair — 
Through all my veins the life runs cold ; 

It is her spirit I behold. 

“ Retire, your presence here profanes 
My lord’s repose ; take back your flowers 
Unto their low white sunless plains ; . 

He hath forgotten your former bowers, 

Their leaf and bloom the worm devours. 

“ You lured him with your beauty’s snare ; 
But now so rapt in sleep he lies, 

Of beauty he hath no more care ; 

Nor would he wit in any wise 
Though Proserpine should kiss his eyes. 

“ Weeping ? What right have you to weep ? 
Were your tears blood or molten flame, 
Regardless he would still thus sleep ; 

Dared you to wail aloud his name 
He still would smile as ere you came : 

“ Go — I brook not your presence here ; 

My scorn had slain you verily, 

Were you not that which you appear.” 

She fades from view — did I but see 
A vision of o’erwrought fantasy ? 


122 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

All the state-coverlets of down 
I pile beneath him and above, 

With all the sables of the Crown 
Yet hath he never warmth thereof ; 
Still he is cold — cold as dead love — 


But I recall me how the child 
Of Housain, on the Vega slain, 

Found him as chill, and o’er him piled 
The tent’s rich orient rugs, in vain 
“ Trying to make him warm again.” 


Then in her little heart she thought 
“ How hot am I, he still so cold,” 

Thus under the piled rugs behold 

She slid and by her love self-taught 

To warm him with her own warmth sought. 


And with all childish cherishing, 

In every artless tender way, 

She strove to make her life the spring 
Of quickening heat to his life ; yea 
On his cold bosom long she lay. 


Her tresses’ rippling warmth she spread 
O’er him and closelier to him pressed : 

His frozen arms, despite strange dread, 

She folded round her and caressed 
With trembling lips his mouth and breast : 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

So I in my lord’s bosom lie 
Embracing him ; and, being bold, 

That he may gain more heat thereby 
His rigid arms that still withhold 
All dear caress myself I fold, 

As the Moor’s child, about me thus ; 

And my warm wealth of hair unbind 
And spread it out to cover us ; 

While round his neck (cold as a shrined 
White marble column) my arms wind ; 

Time is not, nor is night nor day, 

The while by love’s unwearied skill 
I strive, in every varied way 
If but my life through him may thrill 
And thaw the frost of this dread chill. 

My trembling lips, but half aware 
Seek oft to warm his set, still mouth, 

His pulseless breast, his dimmed gold hair 
With kisses, fervent as the south 
Simoom’s, long parched in desert drouth. 

Yet he nor moves nor wakeneth 
And if I but relax my strain 
One little hour, ere long, as death 
He lieth rigid, frozen again ; 

And all my striving seems in vain. 


124 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

It is dawn, the birds flutter and cheep 
In the covert ; I too wake from sleep 
On thy bosom ; behold 
The day rises, but night yet doth keep 
Frost-bound vigil, and bitter winds sweep 
From the north, where wild rack still is rolled 
Cold — cold — cold. 

The birds find no warmth in the nest, 

And I shiver, Beloved, uncaressed, 

For thine arms ne’er unfold 
But seem arms of an effigy pressed 
Evermore on an adamant breast ; 

Thy set lips all their fires withhold ; 

Cold — cold — cold. 

“ Ay, di mi,” Zorohayda’s lone sigh 
Of lost love from my soul breaks — a cry 
Of anguish untold ; 

Thrice accursed are the hopes that belie 
Their own presage when day draweth nigh 
And forsake thus the heart they cajoled ; 

Cold — cold — cold. 


Philippe, O wake — say but one word — but stir, — 
While thou art slumbering silent, moveless, there 
The Universe is dumb, all life is dead, 

And o’er the heavens a pall of sackcloth spread • 
O love, my love — Love’s very self to me, 

All that love was, is, or can ever be, 


* 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Wake ! is my heart so piteously weak 
It cannot rouse thee, or constrain to speak, 

Yet is so strong this boundless woe to bear ? 

Dost thou not hear, beloved ? dost thou not care 
Thou wilt not look on me, nor wake from sleep, 
And I, who have no tears, that I might weep, 

In desperate anguish laugh aloud, but thou 
Still liest unheeding, rousest not ev’n now : 
Stronger than all else is this love of mine 
If Love exist not dominant, Divine, 

Could such be pitiless and set its power 
Against my human strength in this wild hour ? 
Nay ; waken then, doth not thy heart in thee 
Feel my heart breaking, maddening in me ? 


Cold, rigid, mute ; with close-shut eyes, 
In my embrace long — long he lies. 

Yet love undaunted, prophesies 
Of his awakening, and defies 
The power of death — if death this be — 
By its quick fire that thrills through me ; 
A kindling immortality. 

Ah ! mine own lord, my life’s lost king, 

I shudder, as to thee I cling ; 

Some beautiful strange deathly thing 
Thou seemest of which poets sing ; 
Enchanted, terrible : behold 
While in no wise my arms unfold 
Their close caress, I too wax cold ; 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Clay-cold and rigid ; unaware 
Of all, as thou thyself art, ere 
My heart awakes from mute despair, 
Roused by the hope re-pulsing there : 
Quick now as Love’s own heart in me, 

By which all hearts have come to be, 

It must awake the heart in thee. 

On thy set lips I fuse in this 
Long, lingering, last quenchless kiss, 

The whole of life that in me is, 

Yea Love’s own very life I wis ; 

As air its fire above, beneath, 

Around thee burns ; its kindling breath 
Thus, on thy mouth, must quicken death. 


He lives, he lives, he wakes, 

Wellnigh my heart now breaks 
With rapture (as with woe 
So little while ago ;) 

Too great to bear, its boundless joy breaks free, 
And seeketh joy in all glad things that be. 

It sings with all that sing, 

With birds on radiant wing, 

Or nested in the lea ; 

With the glad honey bee 

That wins the rose’s heart in blossomed bowers, 
And with the plain’s cicala-haunted flowers ; 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

With all that laugh for mirth 
Throughout the whole green Earth 
It laughs ; with southern winds 
Whose wide free joy none binds ; 

With every leaf of laughing aspen trees, 

With rivers, streams, and waves of summer seas. 


Too great in my own heart 
For life to bear apart, 

Too great ’tis found for these 
To give it scope or ease ; 

Full-winged it soars, from finite limits free 
And fills with its own bliss infinity. 


O’er the dread dark as o’er primeval night 
The sun has risen, quickening life and light ; 

The snows have decked the earth for festival 
And strewn around their faery blossoms. “ Hail ! ” 
The winds cry, lingering on their winged way ; 

We celebrate our three years’ reign to-day. 

The coppice birches, grouped on either hand, 

Like white-mailed knights of Calatrava stand, 

And rows of sapling poplars, twain and twain, 

Like maidens of some Ice-queen’s festal train 
The long approach line from the royal gate. 

To proffer homage our own Cortes wait 
Audience within ; they sought my presence alone, 

But now the thrilling tidings are made known 
128 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Their suzerain lives, and here, arrayed and crowned 
Upon the dais stands, his lords around ; 

As was erewhile his yearly wont with me 
To accept the service of their fealty. 


The Chamberlain precedes them, entering ; 

“ Why look ye, Sirs, so strangely on the King ? 
Strengthless and pale, against the golden wall 
He leaneth for support, yet on you all 
With gracious welcome smiles right regally. 

As unto him ye bend the loyal knee : 

His hand unto your lips is haply cold, 

Colder than mine, and than its wont of old, 

For the high fever left him very chill, 

And he is weary ; yet it was our will 
Here to receive you, that your sight’s report 
Should lighten the blind rumour of the Court 
That long hath deemed him dead ; as ye withdraw 
Speak in the city of the thing ye saw ; 

Our royal thanks reward your fealty, 

Joy follow you, as joy remains with me.” 


Outstretched upon my knees, as one nigh done 
Unto the death he lies, with wan set smile 
And heavy-lidded eyes scarce closed ; the while 
My love that holds for him all loves in one, 
Yearns o’er him as a Mother o’er her son. 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

A strange protective passion wellnigh breaks 
My heart with boundless pity ; on my breast 
Helpless as my own babe he lies oppressed 
And cannot tell what aileth him, or aches, 
Thus, as my babe, I lull him unto rest. 


Lullaby, lullaby 

Sleep — sleep — what aileth thee ? 
Weary thou art arid chill, 
Slumber will ease thine ill, 
Luring with charm supreme 
Unto fair lands of dream ; 

There thou wilt find repose 
Where the white lotus blows : 
Heart of the heart in me 
Sleep — sleep — O lullaby ; 

Lullaby. 


Lullaby, lullaby ; 

D rowsiest melody 
(Nature's own slumber-spell) 

I to my song impel ; 

Cadence of summer seas 
Murmur of honey bees, 

Cooing of mated doves, 

Sighs of aeolian loves 
Blend in one voice to thee 
Chanting soft lullaby ; 

Lullaby. 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Nay all is vain ; still slumberless he lies, 

And I sit silent, if so be on wing 
Sleep wandering near (allured not as I sing) 
Through the hushed air may scatter o’er his eyes 
White poppies, and repose his heart surprise. 

Long, long I sit here silent and alone ; 

So frozen cold upon my knees he lies 
That my own body freezes in like wise ; 

And changed to some Pieta, carven in stone, 

To him — to me — life, death become unknown. 


If thou art dead my lord, my love, 
As all believe save me ; 

Death is itself a sleep whereof 
None knows the mystery. 



BOOK VIII 




JUANA OF CASTILE 

Juana at last believes Philippe to be dead, and consents 
to the removal of the corse into the Sacristy at Miraflores. 
For some time subsequent to this her strange fancies and 
dreams almost lead to belief in some temporary aberration 
of brain, in which her old predilection for Greek myth 
and Moorish legend is strongly accentuated. This explana- 
tion would also account for what perhaps appears too light 
and irrelevant in her grief, as likewise for the confusion in 
her imagery. Later she acquiesces in the further removal 
of the corse to Granada, where the royal tomb was being 
erected, but insists on seeing once more the face of her 
husband, for which purpose the coffin is opened. The 
funeral cortege proceeds (always by night, on which she 
insists), she herself accompanying it and following close 
to the bier. — Tragic scene at dawn on the wild plain of 
Toro, occasioned by the bier having been taken by mis- 
adventure into a nunnery in lieu of a monastery. — Meeting 
with Ferdinand near Tordesillas. — He succeeds in persuad- 
ing her to retire into its Castle, and to allow the coffin of 
Philippe to be placed in the Convent of Santa Clara, 
opposite her windows. 


*34 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Dead — dead — he is quite dead ; blind Hope undone 
Forsakes me ; Death hath now unveiled her eyes, 
Silenced her dauntless soothsayings each one. 

He is quite dead ; he will not stir nor rise 
Nor waken any more in any wise ; 

And since, of life beyond, life nothing knows, 

Lest I should harm him, holding him thus mine, 

And stay his soul perchance from full repose, 

He shall be laid at Death’s most hallowed shrine, 
From love’s despair withdrawn, to Love’s Divine. 

As is the hush profound beneath the sea, 

So silent and stirless is the heart in me ; 

Passions convulse it nevermore again, 

Weak as spent surf they seem — no storm can be 
In an illimitable agony. 

“ Lacrymosa dies ilia 
Qua resurgat ex favilla ; 

Judicantus homo reus , 

Huic ergo farce deus ; 

Pie Jesu Domine 
Dona eis requiem .” 

Through the dark devoutly steal 
(Fraught with strange and dread appeal ;) 

Strains of priestly requiem, pray 
O my heart in thine own way : 

“ In the night of desperate sorrow 
Dawning never unto morrow, 

Where both heart and spirit break ; 

And our love’s supreme endeavour 

i3S 


( 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Fails, must fail, we know, for ever ; 
Landmark, loadstar from us taken 
Earth’s foundations round us shaken ; 

While the pillars of heaven quake 
Unto our full selves we wake ; 

Life’s whole passions, life’s whole powers, 
Every pulse of being ours 
Centred in one agony : 

If the Lord of Love thou be 

Pie Jesu Domine 

Miserere ! 


“ Blind we stand before the ages, 

Blind our seers and blind our sages ; 

(Faith a dread agnosticism ;) 

Vain their vision and wisdom vaunted ; 
Love, though likewise blind, undaunted 
Joyful issue prophesieth ; 

All the augury belieth. 

We are Doubt’s by cup and chrism, 

Heaven reels down Hell’s abysm ; 

Life and death alike confound us, 

All is dark, above, around us ; 

Dark as time, eternity ; 

If the Lord of Love thou be 

Pie Jesu Domine 

Miserere ! 

“ Fear nor daunts, nor hope constrains us. 
One sole issue now remains us, 

One sole dawn the dark may bear ; 

If the Day-spring thou of Heaven, 


136 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

If the Sun that shines as seven, 

O’er the night of desolation, 

Rise the Da y of restoration ; 

As by ‘ angels unaware ’ 

(‘ Loss,’ ‘ Doubt,’ 4 Agony,’ ‘ Despair ’) 
Goad us on, with fire and sword, 

To that End of Love as Lord 
When it 6 all in all ’ shall be : 

Faithless, blind, we cry to thee 

Pie Jesu Domine 

Miserere 


’Tis midnight ; through the dim translucent haze 
The risen moon of Miraflores gleams, 

O’er tracts of blossomed crocus ; all the ways 
Are white with shining mist, and substance seems 
But shadow ; wearily the faint wind blows, 

As through some realm of Hades in repose. 

All sleep within ; beyond this gleaming mead 
My lord sleeps ; lacking him no rest I find 
In Hades (if this Hades be indeed) ; 

But like a lost Shade, sleepless, seeking blind 
The foregone light, now grope my way to him 
Over the moonlit flowers and white paths dim. 

Here in the sculptured sacristy, I know, 

Amid the cold strange carven effigies f 

He sleeps — the sleep of death — yea even so, 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Stirless and mute as they he slumbering lies ; 

Yet I live but by him ; if I still live 
Then must his lapse from life be fugitive. 

Death is a god withdrawn in awful night 
No sunrise cheers the watcher at His shrine ; 

But dark was Delphi’s fane and never light 
Entered the Oracle of El’s Divine : 

Here with Philippe I wait ; though darkness gird 
High gods, their voice is oft at midnight heard. 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

All is attuned to music , glad or dread , 

Saving the soundless silence of the dead ; 

Love , that hath lost its loved at last 

{Knell, wail of woe and “ de Profundis ” fast !) 

Sets to some desolate monotony ; 

The dreary moaning of a tideless sea . 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

At the banquets of Love, as at banquets of gods, in the 
past 

Ambrosia and nectar were mine ; now I wander outcast 

Through the desolate Earth (though my life is gone forth 
with my lord’s) 

And none to my thirst ev’n one calyx of Lethe accords. 

Thus of hellebore, ofttimes I drink, that in sleep if so be 

I may likewise descend into Hades from substance set 
free. 

O’er and o’er I there seek him in vain, but in vision 
to-night 

Through fields asphodelian we wended in shadowy de- 
light, 

Ghost with ghost in a region of Shades ; yet our hearts 
had repose, 

Till the temperate wind in wild tempest around us arose ; 

Like the sound of the wings of the cherubim heard by the 
seer 

When in “ visions of El ” by the Chebar he saw them 
appear ; 

Like the sound of imponderous seas in the storm of a 
dream ; 

Or of mighty tempestuous gales, as they sweep through the 
gleam 

Of vast forests in autumn, and shrieking and sobbing, lay 
waste 

The splendours of summer ; when myriads of leaves by 
them chased, 

Like flocks of bright birds flee on high ; or in eddies 
around 

Are whirled from the drifts of dead seasons, aglow on the 
ground. 


140 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

So meseemed in that tempest of Hades were driven on 
- the blast, 

Or in eddies upwhirled by the wind from deep drifts of the 
past, 

All hours of all seasons elapsed ; in the bud and the prime 

And the wane of their glory, all hours of dead ages of Time. 

Unassuaged, and unsilenced, the shadowy tempest swept on,' 

Full of wailings and voices phantasmal of life there fore- 
gone. 

The dim past of the myriad manes was quick on the air, 

The dim past, once our own (its delights and its sorrows) 
was there ; 

Wellnigh borne on ourselves by the blast we sought ever in 
- vain, 

To allure to our hearts the lapsed hours of lost joyance 
again : 

All, all was illusion, and impotent ghosts in the shades, 

Very weary we wandered, until I described ’mid dim glades, 

Where narcissi and asphodel bloomed in perpetual flower, 

And the poppies were white o’er the glimmering fields, a 
green bower 

In fair covert from storm ; there we entered, and poppies 
I piled 

For his pillow and lullaby sang till in slumber he smiled. 




A fair white carven glory at last 
Within Granada waits the tomb ; 
Athwart the periods of the Past, 
Whose age of Love doth ne’er decline, 


141 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Caria’s memorial splendour loom ; 

O Artemisia, could I shrine 
My King as thou the memory of thine. 

“ Granada,” at that witching word 
In dark Despair’s dread Cave of Night, 

As at Arabian “ Sesame ” heard, 

Barred doors unclose on glint and gleam 
Of Hope’s rare treasures lost to sight, 

“ Granada ” home of orient Dream, 

Where mystery and magic reign supreme. 

Its spell prevails, and I recall 
How on the Vigil of St. John, 

Released from death’s enchanted thrall, 
King Boabdil holds court each year, 

Deep in the Mountain of the Sun ; 

And his dead Moors afar and near, 
Throughout the whole dim land in life appear. 

Thither they speed with soundless haste, 
By shadowy grove and glimmering stream ; 
O’er star-gemmed hill, and moonlit waste 
On their own Arab coursers fleet ; 

Or where gold mosque and minaret gleam, 
Down many a dusky lamplit street, 

And mazy path, press on with silent feet. 

The magic Vigil now draws nigh ; 
Perchance in that great wakening stir 
Within the City itself, where lie 
So many Moors, in death as deep, 


142 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

My lord might waken ; we will bear 
Him hence and there the vigil keep : 
With Boabdil he may arise from sleep. 


Since, with my lord, life died for me, 
Since his closed eyes shut sight 
From mine, forbear the mockery 
Of outer life and light. 

Filled full of darkness is my heart 
My soul in death is bound ; 

The cortege must by night depart, 

No stir of life around. 

In harmony let all be done, 

Like unto like ; yea light 

To those whose eyes can see the sun, 

But night to death’s dark night. 


Yet once again, Belov’d, mine eyes have sight, 

For the last time I look upon thy face, 

(Like one who knows he looks his last on light 
And will henceforth for ever dwell in night). 

“ Philippe ” — unanswered, echoless, my cry 

Rings on, meseems, through boundless voids of space ; 

Thou dost not hear me though I stand so nigh ; 

My kisses on thy lips have no reply ; 


I 43 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Though my hand trembles in thy clustered hair, 
Of it, of me, thou liest unaware ; 

Thou art as if thou wert not : — dead, quite dead ; 
But in my dreams thou livest, I find thee there. 
Within Granada hallowed rest were thine ; 

There kinglier pillow waits thy royal head ; 

We bear thee hence ; at whatsoever shrine 
Thou may’st be laid I know thou still art mine. 


Now unto thee 
Is death and the night ; 

Now unto me 
Mid-darkness for light : 

On my lips, though mortality lingers, my life hath with 
thine lapsed from sight. 

The dead with the dead, 

As a ghost by thy bier 
I wend, while the tread 
Of the bearers I hear, 

And the priest’s chanted requiem, and see the red torches 
oft flicker and veer. 

O’er the plateau we wind 
Through dread silence profound ; 

Moon and stars wander blind 
In black heavens ; and around 

Frozen, stirless, and rigid, with cerements of darkness the 
Earth is enwound. 


144 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

In thy death is extinct 
The life that inspired ; 

With which all was instinct ; 

The spirit that fired 

With a glory of light, and of passion all Nature, in thy 
breath expired. 

Lo, a universe dead ; 

The heavenly host ■ 

Quenched fires o’er thy head ; 

One with me through the frost 

They yet follow thee, as on that night when their fires 
in my heart’s fire were lost. 

To thy life all converged, 

Centred there in delight ; 

With me all is merged 
In thy burial rite : 

Death is God ; an unutterable horror is here of cold — 
silence — night. 

Slowly onward we wend 
Through the desolate waste, 

That thy form may be shrined 
And thy spirit embraced 

At the Church’s high altar of Love and no longer at mine 
be abased. 

“ Love ” — ere that sound, 

Echoed soul-ward expire 
O’er the frozen profound 
Of my heart, lo, its dire 

Intense Antenoran frost burns, a white heat of intolerable 
fire. 

l 45 


K 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

In the subtle clear flame 
Life, death, hope, fear, despair 
Fuse and blend, while the same 
Pallid fire seems to flare 

From the planetary host, and they tremble as kindled by 
it unaware. 

And the Earth, stark and cold, 

In her shroud quails from stone 
As on Her heart lay hold 
The dread pangs of my own ; 

Is it love’s phoenix-pyre that prevails ? burning thus in 
its desert alone ? 

All lapses, the dawn 
Shivers grey in the gloom ; 

Moon and stars are withdrawn ; 

Monasterial towers loom, 

There we wend into chantry till nightfall, by ways where 
white asphodels bloom. 


Women — women — soft-eyed women, very fair and young 
and sweet, 

Flit through glimmering hall and portal, shadow-like with 
soundless feet ; 

Is it some Hadean vision fretting thus my tortured brain ? 

Is the pile some Lamian palace by enchantment raised again ? 

Round the catafalque they gather, murmuring low : — this 
shall not be, 


146 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Even now they may have stolen my dead lord away from me ; 

Borne the bier must be from hither, back unto the desert 

There the royal argent opened, I must see his face again, 

Lest he should be there no longer, lest some woman like to 
these 

Should have stolen him already ; and outstretched upon 
her knees, 

In her secret bower he lieth, her arms round him in his sleep ; 

While we here a vacant vigil through the long hours vainly 
keep. 



Glacial as the deathly Sansar, o’er the waste the wild 
winds blow ; 

Round the bier the flambeaux waver, flaring high and 
flickering low ; 

While the censered incense curling lingers frozen o’er my 
dead, 

And the cold faint lurid sunrise glints athwart his golden 
head. 

All is well, as erst he sleepeth ; cold he knows not, calm, 
supine ; 

No fair woman of those hath touched him ; none have 
kissed his lips since mine ; 

Priests shall close the gleaming argent, and new requiem 
here shall rise, 

Lest his soul’s repose their presence hath profaned in any 
wise. 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

“ Pie Jesu Domine 

Dona eis requiem 
Eis requiem 
Dona , Dona 

Eis requiem 
Requiem ceternam .” 

“ Hush thee, heart, restrain thy throbbing, 
Thou wilt shake thy lord’s repose, 

As a woman’s anguished sobbing 
Shakes the calm of one who goes 
Forth with Death, from mortal woes. 

“ Hush thee, harken, requiem rises ; 

Lo, the Christ uplifted ; see, 

He in some strange wondrous wise is 
Love in vanquished agony : 

Pray ; perchance he God may be.” 


• • • • • 

On — on — on — it seems for ever, through the long low 
barren plain ; 

Winds around us moaning, shrieking, like pent souls in 
penal pain : 

On — still on — shall I find never even that foregone dread 
rest, 

With my dead in Death’s calm presence ? there alone of 
him possessed. 

By the dreary sluggish river, black, Cocytian, we wend ; 

Leagues afar Granada glimmers, and the way hath never 
end. 

148 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Full of grief my Father meets us ; urges tarrying and 
repose, 

And, hard by, the lichened Castle of grey Tordesillas 
shows ; 

In its precincts “ Santa Clara,” where in cloistered 
sanctuary 

My dead lord might likewise tarry, where still near him 
I should be ; 

Takes my hand and leads me thither, like a tired bewildered 
child, 

Heavy, stupefied with sorrow ; from some futile quest 
beguiled. 


149 


BOOK IX 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

At Tordesillas. Juana remains there many years ; never 
leaving the precincts of the Castle until her death. During 
this time Henry VII. of England (who had admired her 
so much when at his Court with Philippe) proposes for her 
hand, others do so likewise ; but she discountenances all, 
being entirely absorbed in the memory of her husband, 
whose body always remained during her lifetime in the 
Convent of Santa Clara, opposite the Castle windows. 
Interview with Philippe. Her later days, which are said 
to have been haunted by evil visions. Her death. 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

At length the charm of waving hands, 
And paces interwoven, taught 
Unto the king of orient lands, 

And by him on his Queen then wrought, 
The spell oft proved in part on me 
Is wrought in its entirety ; 

And lost to life and use, as she, 

I dwell in an enchanted Tower : 

Escape is none, spell-bound both power 
And will to strive for liberty ; 

The dead, in catacombs long lain 
More simply might for issue strain : 

As sight to her was blind and vain, 

Saving for him who wrought the spell, 

So here with my dead King I dwell 
And can behold none else again. 

Around my Tower the world I know 
Is wide, and there overwhelmed with woe 
Are other women ; could I go, 

And weep for their great grief with them, 
Or the salt tide of sorrow stem 
Easier were mine and worthier so. 

But like a broken stone my heart 
Is left to lie for ever apart. 

Lost unto life and use and throne, 

A realm of air the realm of Spain 
Appears to my bewildered brain ; 

Its people’s call illusory, blown 
From shores phantasmal o’er a sea 
Wherein I sink eternally. 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

T here was an image in Crete 
White marble from brow unto feet ; 

Stirless through ages of old 
Silent as death and as cold , 

In Mount Ida it stood , and nor sorcerer nor sage could its 
mystery unfold. 

A marvel , a maiden more fair 
Than ever mortality bare : 

Less lovely ( tho ’ girt with her zone) 

Cytherea if changed into stone 

By some strange inconceivable anguish of love unto mortals 
unknown. 

Chiselled by Art's subtlest mage , 

Or born in a mythical age , 

And froz'n by immortal despair ; 

Statue-like , upright , there 

Hidden in the crypt of the Earth , of time and of change 
unaware. 

Stirless she stood without moan , 

Through cycles of darkness , <2/07^ ; 

TV/ jA* 

Intolerable anguish found vent ; 

Wept from eyes and from breast and from heart ; for her 
bosom of marble was rent. 

Ever the dripping of tears , 

Falling through centuries of years ; 

Tears that naught mortal might quell , 

That were fire , that were blood as they fell , 

Or colder than death , became the dread source of the 

rivers of hell . 


154 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

O the passion , the woe , ^ despair , 

77><? unutterable love hidden there , 

Its mystery is solved yet by none ; 

The maiden — 07 * statue — is gone ; 

Her tears jail alone in my song ; but through hell the dread 
rivers flow on. 

Note . See Dante’s “ Inferno,” Canto XIX. 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

With my dead lord in the white fane of Death 
I live, for death is now my life to me ; 

The form that bears my name and still draws breath 
Some other woman seems ; here oft I see 
Shekinah-like the god’s own presence shine 
And I have grown to trust in His Divine. 


Death is the great Life-Giver ; like those Powers 
By which Hellenic deities had birth, 

He quickens all dead and fallen gods of ours, 

Sets them again on high ; creates new Earth 
And Heaven, wherein no more to mind 
Comes sorrow for their glory once declined. 


How dark it is ; bewildered, blind, I seem 
To wake as in my childhood from some dream 
Of midnight horror ; yet no sleep was mine, 

And through the chill impervious murk supreme, 
The futile noonday sun essays to shine. 


The Valley of the Shadow of Death is this ? 
Where in the dusk more dense than dark, I miss 
Ever my way, and Phantasms of the mind, 
Powers, Presences, winged Dreams of the Abyss, 
Beset my soul that wrestles with them, blind. 



JUANA OF CASTILE 

Legions of evil portent, yet through all 
One dominant dread doth my whole being thrall. 
Lest well with Philippe dead it should not be ; 
Wildly I cry, “ Let not thy judgments fall 
On him, Lord Love, but O in lieu on me.” 

At wrestle still with these dire Powers of Night 
Vainly I strive to him — no ray of light — 

Yet to the utmost I in Love believe ; 

All will be well with him in their despite, 

Unto the utmost, Love will all retrieve. 


Henry of England seeks my hand ; at last 
Philippe, the latent passion of the past, 

So long time silent between thee and me 
(At the tranquillity of death aghast :) 

By this strange insult to thy memory 
Rekindled, like a geyser in mid-ice, 

Seethes at my heart. The years have waned but thrice 
Since love last listened for thy voice and heard ; 
iEons — eternity — would not suffice 
That it should brook from other lips one word ; 

True, thou art dead ; thus I am as thou art, 

We are from other loves withdrawn apart ; 

I scarce can stoop from scorn to answer this, 

On thy set lips mine kissed their final kiss. 


JUANA OF CASTILE 


Ah love ! Ah love ! 

The seasons wax and wane, 

Storms rage or cushats coo, 

While hearts thy name profane, 

And deem thy seasons too 
Lapse, live again ; 

They ring the changes through the year — “ his dead 
Then live the new year the new seasons instead . 55 

Ah love ! Ah love ! 


Ah love ! Ah love ! 

Thou art no bird whose strain 
Is hushed o’er its dead mate 
In autumn’s wane, 

Yet scarce full spring doth wait 
To nest again ; 

Thy lord is dead, thou can’st take none in lieu ; 
Thou lovest once and never more anew. 

Ah love ! Ah love ! 


Ah love ! Ah love ! 

No transient thing hath part, 

Nor future is, nor past 
Within thy heart ; 

There life doth death outcast, 

As God thou art : 

“ Wed thee again, thy lord is dead ” ; too fine 
Death’s difference to thee, he still is thine ; 

Ah love ! Ah love ! 


158 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

After the lava-fire outbreaking 

With mighty pangs the Earth’s heart shaking, 

A deep tranquillity around ; 

After the tempest of the Ocean 
Tumult of winds, tameless commotion, 

An elemental peace profound. 

Lulled to like calm, as one storm-driven 
On shores Hadean, and newly shriven 
From mortal passion and pain I seem ; 

After the fire and tumult, after 

The wildered anguish, moan and laughter 

Appear as one, and vague as dream. 

No power love from love divorces ; 

Invincible amid all forces, 

By that strange magnetism its own, 

So calm now though so broken-hearted, 

Lo it draws back its loved, departed, 
Discarnate, from the Unseen Unknown. 

Philippe, unto thy presence waking, 

The desert drouth within me slaking, 

I see thee — in no dream — again ; 

A fire of Love’s own shrine thy face is, 

And straining toward thee my embrace is, 

No longer fearful of disdain. 

Stay, stay with me, Beloved, go not ! 

If thou art in the spirit I know not ! 

Say only, is it well with thee ? 

Quickened as one the last day raiseth, 

My life enthralled on thy life gazeth, 

Nor wits if in the body we be. 


U 9 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

A fuller love my own is learning 
Where nor pent passion is, nor yearning, 
Nor pain, nor aught of mortal birth ; 

Part rapture and part wonder seeming, 

’Tis like a love that poets dreaming 
Might know perchance in loves of Earth. 

See my whole being yearns and trembles ; 
Thy voice, thy own voice none dissembles, 
Thrills through my soul once more at last, 
And heart to heart we have communion 
Transcending mortal thought or union, 
And all life craved for in the past. 


While rapt beyond all Earth’s emotion 
My life swells (an empyreal ocean), 
Thou drawest yet more near, and now 
In some yet closer, sweeter, higher, 
Strange love of pure aeonial fire — 

Lo ! thou art I, and I am thou. 


My women tell me many years 
Have dawned and darkened over me 
In Tordesillas ; they seem tears 
Dropped in a soundless, shoreless sea ; 
Time is become eternity. 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

Earth is for me but Philippe’s tomb. 
Rest is not, save when I repair 
And kneel in Santa Clara’s gloom, 

Of all things transient unaware, 

And oft he cometh to me there. 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

All life knows sleep and death , save only love , 
Which is as God eternally awake , 

Deathless as He : whatever the woe thereof 
Its heart too is as God's and cannot break . 


/ 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

“ Would God that it were dawn ” at dark I pray ; 

“ Would God that it were eve ” at dawn of day : 

Intolerable alike the dark and light 

And evil visions haunt me day and night ; 

Ev’n now, awake I dream, and see a star 
To earth from heaven fall, thence downward far ; 

Its king is my king and I follow where 
A “ smoke of torment ” darkens sky and air ; 

(The blinding fume of Love’s abysmal hell ;) 

There I descend, still following where he fell ; 
Through flaming reek the fiery serpents hiss, 

But the birds’ carols in the bowers of bliss 
Were harsher music, for ere long I see 
Him who is very Heaven in Hell to me, 

Though at his side the Lamian woman stands, 
Weeping and wailing, wringing her small hands. 

He is not hers ; she shall not o’er him weep, 

She shall not watch thus o’er his anguished sleep ; 
Yet tears may ease him in his burning pain, 

Tears — even one such Dives craved in vain ; 

And I have none, my own were long ago 
At their source frozen ; could they thaw and flow 
They were like molten lava : quick and cold 
Hers fall upon his brow, his lips ; behold 
I will not stay her weeping ; would that she 
A fountain were to flow perpetually ; 

But in the fume she changes (as of old 
The Lamia) to a serpent, crowned with gold, 

That hath a woman’s face most wondrous fair, 

And a gold glory of long glittering hair, 

Hair of a woman, as had those direful things 
That rose from Hell’s great reek with scorpion stings, 




JUANA OF CASTILE 

In dread apocalypse to torture men ; 

And “ power is hers to hurt ” as theirs was then ; 
Yea now such torment strikes from her through me 
That all is lost in one blind agony. 


Thank God, the long dread night of life is past, 

And lulled by His narcotic, thus, at last, 

I dream the latest dream that mortal may 

The dream of death, that comes at dawn of day. 

Storm and tumult ; the sound of tempestuous waves and 
wild wind : 

In mine ears the loud roaring of surf, and with darkness 
made blind, 

By the hurricane’s blast on the grey northern ocean again 

I am driv’n — but alone now — alone — Philippe comes not 
as then ; 

Up on high the waves bear me ; then gulphed in them, 
downward I sink ; 

Downward — downward — the while of the white, seething 
surges I drink ; 

Yet my soul is at one with the storm, as it was on the night 

When we drave on the dim Cornish coast in the glimmering 
light ; 

And at length it meseems that I drink, O my lord, there 
with thee, 

Of the potent and sorcerous wine from the cup of the Sea ; 

The one only philtre remaining for us even then 

That so love, sunken deep yet undrowned, we might find 
once again. 


164 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

O’er the tumult of waves and of winds, through the darkness 
I hear 

A low call — my own name — but bewildered I listen ; and 
clear 

Though the voice through the uproar is heard, I still know 
not who calls ; 

Philippe ? — Love ? — or The Christ ? and the wine of the 
ocean bethralls 

Soul and body in stupor ; but swiftly my heart (dumb 
and cold) 

Leaps up wild as from death, and strains forth in response ; 
as of old 

With the storm of its passion commingling the storm of the 
sea, 

Finding scope in the elements, fusing their ferment in 
me. 

From the spell of the Orient Tower broken free, with the 
wind 

And the billows it blends in one tempest, invincible, blind, 

Boundless, fathomless ; storm within storm, every depth, 
every height, 

Convulsed in one passion that strives toward the voice 
through the night. 

Closer now, calm and clear o’er the turmoil the call comes 
again, 

And the ocean upgathers its uttermost forces at strain 

In one mighty tumultuous tide, beating up in reply, 

With the hurricane’s blast, for my life is now they ; they 
are I. 

Soft, O soft, the strange tempest abates ; as a sea that hath 
found 

A wide harbour and calm at the last : with a lullaby sound 

165 


JUANA OF CASTILE 

The wild waves ebb to rest ; and the hurricane’s blast o’er 
the deep 

Is as gentle and low as the breath of an infant asleep. 
Dimly looms, through the glimmering dawn, a fair shore ; 
while above, 

And around, and below, all is rest — all is peace — all is love. 

Lullaby, lullaby 

Sleep soft O heart in me ; 

Hushed is the storm of life 
Wild winds fold wing from strife ; 

Love’s surging deep at last 
(Passion’s pent tumult past,) 

Breaks on a boundless shore ; 

Tempests thus rage no more : 

— All is at rest in me — 

— All is tranquillity — 

But — blind I — fail to — see — 

What — ha — ven — this — may — be. 


Printed by Bai.lantyne & Co, Limited 
Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, London 


COSMO VENUCCI, SINGER, 

AND OTHER POEMS 


Notices of the Press 

“The romance of an operatic star” — a tenor, we must suppose, 
who has undertaken many amatory parts on the lyric stage — is the 
theme of Cosmo Venucci , Singer ; and with considerable command of 
melody and fervour is it invested by the poet. From La Scala even 
unto San Carlo does Cosmo Venucci sing in impassioned strains of 
the charms of the adorable, not-impossible She, and his singing is so 
fervid and, on the whole, so convincing, that we are delighted to 
know in the end that his raptures find rest in victory. There are 
some fine and true notes of passion in Miss Earle’s lyrical interludes ; 
and the verse generally is the verse of a poet, not the verse of the 
verser . — Saturday Review . 

“ May Earle ” is the author of poems which, though as fulfilment 
they cannot satisfy, are sufficiently remarkable, if the book is a first 
one, to be considered of promise quite exceptional among the many 
new books of well-composed verse, which are the daily products of 
the present literary period. Cosmo Venucci , Singer , and other Poems , 
is not a work on which a poet’s reputation could be founded ; its 
style is too flamboyant .... But underneath the surface of 
faults there seems to be what will wear through that crust and 
demolish it and show itself as unaffected poetic energy. When 
restraint and refinement have become so general as to be almost 
inevitably imitated by readers when they proceed to be writers, the 
faults of a less prevalent school may be hailed as something indicating 
more originality of mind than if the writer had assimilated the 
manner of the day. Flamboyance, when not merely the result of 
assimilation or of conscious imitation, may be a better augury of 
right richness when chastening comes than conventional modera- 
tion. Cosmo Venucci is an Italian opera singer who, in many 
stanzas of varied measure, tells diary fashion his love-tale — how at 
first his soul was possessed by art alone, then by her — how he found 
his hopes a delusion, for she had loved, not the man, but the. singer — 


how after a weary exile, away singing in the sunless countries of the 
North, he came back a greater singer, and she loved him, and they 
married. . . . On the whole the emotional continuity of the story 
is well sustained. Space will not allow of quotations to show the 
present nature of May Earle’s poetry ; and, indeed, a critic who 
accounts her higher by what she may do than by what she has done 
cannot feel that detached passages will convey anything of the im- 
pression caused by the whole : but we should like to give this pretty 
song-like bit, which is wedged between a description of Florence put 
in on the ground that Cosmo thought She was there, though she was 
not, and another of Fiesole, where it turned out that she was while 
he was admiring Florence as her then residence : 

In the sky for sunlight is cloud, 

And silence for song of the bird ; 

The wind in the woodland sighs, 

The sunless grey river replies, 

And the lilies’ heads are all bowed 
As the sough of the storm is heard. 

Dear, the dawn was more sweet than the day, 

The bud than the blossoming flower, 

The promise of noon than the noon 
That shone and was shadowed so soon ; 

The winds had but led me astray, 

And the sun had mistaken thy bower. 

. . . Twelve sonnets To my Master have a vividness and energy 
which make them very interesting. — Athenceum . 

There is no little forcible and even poetical rhetoric in these 
verses. The rhythmical swing of the lines not unfrequently reminds 
us of Mr. Swinburne himself. . . . This is distinctly a book of 
promise. — Spectator. 

There is good promise in May Earle’s Cosmo Venue ci, Singer , and 
other Poems . Every evidence is here of power and capacity for musical 
expression in the poem which gives its title to the volume ; while 
The Suicide's Wife is instinct with a tender pathos. In A Phase of 


Agnosticism we have ingenious utterance of some of the current types 
of thought on theological matters. — Graphic. 

Cosmo Venucci , Singer , is not only melodious and graceful, but 
thoughtful, and fertile in material for thought. Its philosophy is 
pessimistic, but there are gleams of sunshine through its darkest 
clouds, and even such gloomy places as A Phase of Agnosticism and 
A Suicide’s Wife are not wholly in a minor key. — Morning Post. 

Both passion and music . . . burned through and through 
with the sun of Italy . . . contains passages of great sweetness and 
beauty.” — Scotsman . 

The value of the poems is not to be found in the story, but in 
the poetic wealth in which it is wrapped as in a garment of music, fire, 
and passion. — Glasgow Herald. 


M 


THE QUEST OF FIRE 

T he Quest of Fire , by May Earle, is the work of a lady who once again 
shows her capacity to write strong and original if somewhat rugged 
verse. — The Times . 

This small collection of poems contains some of unusual merit — 
of the presence of a genuine poetic gift no reader can remain doubtful. 
Both the substance and technique of the piece here printed displays 
true poetic genius. The Modern Marsyas is a poem of which no poet 
need be ashamed. Happily Miss Earle has too much indigenous 
poetry to be an echo of any of the greater singers, and both in the 
kind of subjects which attract her and in her way of looking at them 
her independency and originality are proclaimed. — British Weekly. 

There is a great deal of imagination in these charming poems ; 
thought, feeling, and inspiration often reaching a high level of beauty. 
The Kingdom of Love is most fertile of passion and music, with a 
certain vividness of energy that force themselves on the reader. The 
same author’s Cosmo Venucci , Singer , it will be remembered, instantly 
attracted attention when it appeared. The Quest of Fire shows a con- 
siderable advance in artistic perception on the previous effort, being 
far more dignified and easy ; the effective toning down of the slightly 
spasmodic and exaggerated emotional manifestations being apparent. 
Miss Earle has before her a career. — Whitehall Review. 

The longest and most ambitious poem in the volume, At the 
Shrines of Nature , is an ode or series of odes celebrating a refined sort of 
Nature-worship or Pantheism, and written with an impetuous sweep 
of verbal melody which irresistibly suggests recollections of Swinburne 
and loses nothing by the comparison. The other pieces have a like 
soaring character and rise to regions of the imagination where what 
in plain speaking is called “ sense ” is apt to be lost sight of in a pro- 
fusion of glowing imagery. — Scotsman . 

A very promising volume of verse. Marked at every turn by 
indisputable evidence of inspiration. — The Quest of Fire is the quest 
of poetry, and in its pursuit Miss Earle gives proof that she possesses 
plentiful imagination and, with intervals of crudity, a musical voice. 
Her metres are modelled upon Swinburne and she has chosen a hard 
master ; in consequence there are occasional breaks in the melody 


which argue that Miss Earle’s ear is apt to fail her, but despite these 
momentary' lapses the book is one of great promise. — Sun . 

The Quest of Fire by May Earle introduces us to a sweet singer 
who has a distinct poetic gift. Brooding thought and a true culture 
characterise Miss Earle, and her rhythm if not varied is free and 
fascinating. The chief poem, At the Shrines of Nature, is conceived 
in a large and striking manner. Miss Earle’s child-pieces are capital. 
— Christian Leader . 










































































































. V 
- -• 
















Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: June 2009 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724) 779-2111 



